Ashley Husk was at home in Ferrisburgh, and nine months pregnant, when she heard a distant gunshot on August 8. She stepped outside to see her dog, Keira, running down the street toward her. Husk wasn’t surprised; loud noises had always startled the animal.
But once inside, Keira paced nervously and wouldn’t sit down. Husk saw that the dog’s hindquarters were covered in blood. She combed through Keira’s thick fur and realized the animal was bleeding from multiple wounds.
Husk rushed Keira to the Vergennes Animal Hospital, where vets pulled more than 40 birdshot pellets from the 10-year-old Great Pyrenees and huskie mix.
A neighbor, Michael Roberts, 57, had fired birdshot at Keira from close range after she wandered onto his front yard, authorities say. State police arrested him on a felony charge of aggravated animal cruelty — the first such case since a fortified law went into effect on July 1 allowing harsher penalties for that offense. Roberts is due in Addison Superior Court next month.
During a brief interview in his front yard, Roberts said he intends to fight the charge in court and suggested that there is more to the story. “It’s a neighborhood thing,” he said. “It’s not something I wanted to do.” He declined further comment.
Husk, 29, seemed genuinely puzzled by her neighbor’s actions. She said neither she nor her husband, Andy, was feuding with him. Roberts lives across Sand Road about 100 yards from her family’s home in a quiet, rural area between Lake Champlain and a patchwork of dairy farms. She said Roberts had never complained — or even mentioned — that Keira was wandering onto his property or causing any problems.
“If he had, we would have put an end to it,” Ashley Husk said. In an imaginary interaction with Roberts, she addressed her neighbor: “If you don’t want her on your lawn, that’s fine. But why would you shoot the animal?” She added, “You can’t just get angry and resolve your anger with a firearm. You have to be an adult and talk to people if you have a problem.”
Husk said she and her husband aren’t close to Roberts but have enjoyed a cordial relationship with him: They chatted pleasantly at a mutual friend’s wedding in July, she said.
Her husband confronted Roberts after the shooting, according to Husk, who said that Roberts invoked Ferrisburgh’s leash ordinance as a justification for what he did. The town bans dogs from running free and empowers an animal-control officer to impound wandering dogs. Husk acknowledged that Keira has free rein of their 20 acres but said the dog rarely leaves the property.
Animal-control conflicts are part of life in Vermont. But a recent cruelty case revealed the wanton brutality so many innocent creatures face. In October 2016, a Barre man, Quinton Clayton, trained his compound bow on a 23-year-old horse named Bunny — and killed her. After he reportedly admitted the deed, he explained, “It wasn’t a big deal. It was just a horse and not a person.”
In response, Bunny’s owner, Regan Howard, launched a crusade for tougher sentences in animal cruelty cases, and Clayton was eventually sentenced to six months behind bars. That was noteworthy: Animal rights advocates say it was the first time in many years they’d seen someone sent to prison in Vermont for that particular crime.
Howard and animal rights activists used Bunny’s death to persuade lawmakers to enhance the potential penalties for aggravated animal cruelty, from three to five years in prison. The charge is a felony used when somebody causes serious injuries to an animal that were intentional and “without just cause.”
For good measure, lawmakers also made bestiality a crime, since state law hadn’t specifically addressed it.
The law as it’s being applied to Roberts is exactly what activists had in mind when they lobbied for the cruelty bill, Addison Humane Society director Jessica Danyow said.
“Animal cruelty is a real thing in Vermont, and it’s not something that’s necessarily easy to prosecute or prove sometimes,” Danyow said. “But in instances like this that are egregious, it is nice to have laws that are strong in response.”
Addison County State’s Attorney Dennis Wygmans declined to comment on the case, saying he had not yet reviewed the file.
Husk said she was unaware of the recent change to the law. She said she just wanted to see Roberts punished for targeting Keira, a beloved pet who is part of her family.
In fact, the dog was her first dependent. When Husk and her husband were building their home in 2009, they talked about adopting a pet. Husk began casually searching online. She came across a picture of Keira, who had been rescued from an American Indian reservation in northern New York and was living in a nearby shelter.
“When I saw her face, I felt like I had to have her,” Husk said. “You could just see something in her eyes.”
When they picked Keira up, she weighed less than 50 pounds, and her ribs were visible. Back in Vermont, Keira was skittish around men, leading Husk to conclude that she likely had been abused. But before long, Keira put on weight and grew into an energetic, loving dog.
Since adopting her, the Husks have taken in two more pets. They’ve also had three children — including a son who was born just a week after Keira was shot.
The dog is devoted, according to Husk. “If my daughter runs out to the end of the driveway to get on the school bus in the morning, and I’m trying to get my shoes to catch up with her, Keira will run outside and stand between my daughter and the road. She won’t let anything happen to her.”
Husk made an appeal on GoFundMe for Keira’s veterinary costs, describing what had happened, and online donors quickly covered the expense. After two days of surgeries and a regimen of pain medication and antibiotics — $2,300 worth of care — Keira was back home and healing last week. Veterinarians expect her to make a full recovery, Husk said.
Still, she said that Roberts should be held accountable and “made an example out of” for a crime that used to get swept under the rug. “People need to be held responsible for any type of animal cruelty,” she said. “Some jail time to think about what he did is absolutely necessary.”
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This article appears in The Animal Issue August 2017.
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I will never agree with what this man did to this dog but, in the same way that I think he needs to be fully accountable for his actions, so do I believe that the owners should be accountable for not being more responsible with the dog they chose to rescue. I also think they should be accountable to their neighbors who might not feel safe having a dog running freely about and on their property. It isnt their job to tell you where your dog is. Also, if you are not supervising your dog, how do you know the dog is staying within the 20 acre property lines? They dont have any way of knowing what property is theirs to roam or not. As to notifying the owner before taking action, don’t assume that everyone is going to know you or your dog, or know where to find you.
An unsupervised, freely roaming dog is a vulnerable, unprotected dog. It is your job to protect them when you take them in to your care. You would not let your 3 year old child out, unsupervised, and expect nothing will happen to them while they are roaming freely about.
If the dog accidentally slipped a lead or escaped from the house, then I would advise taking measures to prevent such an occurrence in the future. That is your responsibility. Anything less is on you and any vet bills that come of it are considered natural consequences for which you, rather than the generous public should be paying. Accidents happen, sure but, they are not without fault and anyone with pets has at one time or another, vet bills which can get rather high.
—cont
The fact is, any one that takes on the care of another life, whether it is our human children or other species, is taking on all that comes with it. We must be responsible for their safety and well-being, for the costs associated, and do the best we can and yes, sometimes that can feel very overwhelming but, that doesnt make it any less our responsibility.
To the people that shoot animals that come on their property, the sight of an animal should inspire something other than the thought or desire to shoot and kill that life. An unleashed dog, is not a naughty or bad dog. It is a dog either in need of help or in need of a guardian to step up and be more responsible. Use your thinking skills to find alternative methods of handling the situation if you need to but, dont attack the dog. I do believe there should be strict laws and harsh punishment for those who intentionally, and without necessity, harm innocent, vulnerable lives (regardless of species.) Evolve and go find something more productive to do.
Finally, I am sorry if this sounded very harsh. There are lessons we all have to learn and things we should think about. As adults, we should be teaching our children what being responsible is about. That starts with us being responsible for the choices we make and the things that result from those choices. I am very happy to hear that this dog is recovering well though I am saddened for the further trauma she has had to endure through no fault of her own. I am also happy that there are laws in place to help hold this man accountable for his cruelty to this innocent and vulnerable dog.
The only innocent victim here was the dog whose owners ignore the leash law assuming their dog miraculously knows where their property line is and whose neighbor took a shot at it rather than communicate. This case just illustrates why it can be a tough world to be a dog.
As an old 4-H’er, I was taught to respect the law, and to keep my animals on my own property. Of course it goes to keeping the animal safe from harm and being a good neighbor, but it can go well beyond that too. If your loose animal causes an accident you are liable for damages a driver’s responsibility is always to human life first.
Case in point. One person was killed and another injured when their vehicle struck and killed a bull on Route 4 in Killington, VT at approximately 35 to 40 MPH after which the vehicle veered into a tree. The owner of the bull was charged with involuntary manslaughter and could face 15 years in prison because he failed to rectify inadequate fencing even though his bull was a frequent escapee. It was that failure to address an ongoing hazard to the public that elevated the bull owner’s liability beyond financial damages to serious criminal negligence as far as the prosecutor was concerned.
Although the owner wasn’t arrested they now have a record of bad judgement and ignoring the law. If they ever have another dust up over failing to take proper care of their animal the authorities have every right to consider their history.
This just makes me sick to see how these animals are being treated like for real why is that people who are taking care of animals are always abusing them and the fact that tons of them dont care about their animals like if youd rather beat them they why do have them in the first place comensence dont adopt a animal if you’re going to abuse them Im doing a project on animal abuse and looking at pictures of them abused just kills my heart but Ill be doing a capstone on it Rant over
It’s interesting how upset we get over dogs and horses, but with cows, deer, chickens and pigs we let farmers inflict all the cruelty they feel is necessary.