Dog left bloodied, injured

A Kelowna woman faces hundreds of dollars in vet bills after picking up her pet from a local kennel.

The woman says she dropped her border collie, Morgan, off Feb. 27 at a dog kennel on Chute Lake Road.

It had only been there a few hours before she received a call that her dog had a “slash on his shoulder” and “not to worry.”

She quickly returned to the kennel, and heard her dog wimpering.

“Morgan was brought into the room, and I could see he was bleeding profusely from the wound,” she said.

She claims the kennel owner didn't say what happened, only that she should “put a BandAid on it.”

The woman took her pet to Fairfield Animal Hospital right away, where it was given several stitches and had to be sedated, she said. The bill has totalled more than $850.

“He was bleeding really badly through the neck area. He has quite a few stitches through the front and top of his neck,” she said.

The woman admits she did sign a waiver to have her dog at the kennel, but says she didn’t sign up for it to be attacked.

“When you sign a waiver, I am trusting these people to take care of my dog,” she said.

She contacted a lawyer, but was told because of the waiver, she has no recourse.

Marcel Frigon, owner of Woofy World Kennels & Daycare, said in an email to Castanet that staff "regret that Morgan was injured while he was in for a play date."

Frigon said there was no "dog fight" at the kennels that day and called the incident unfortunate.

He said the young dog was "doing generally well" while "playing and learning," and added puppies "use their claws and teeth to solve their problems. Ninety-nine per cent of the time, these solutions do not result in any kind of injury, but sometimes they do."

Morgan was "not at all bothered by what happened" and "continued to enjoy playing with other dogs, as he had been doing all day." 

What happened "was either a boundary (respect) lesson or an overly energetic playtime accident," he said.