Attacked dogs recovering as donations pour in

KELOWNA – Since news of the horrific attack that killed one dog and severely injured two others reached the public, the outpouring of support from communities as far away as Calgary has touched everyone involved.

“It’s been really incredible,” Burtch Animal Hospital office administrator Kelsey Hall said Friday. “We’ve been getting calls all day from people who either want to donate or just want to know how they are doing.”

Hall says they have received donations from 27 people so far and have already paid more than half of the $5,500 bill. A man from Alberta even interrupted his vacation to stop by the clinic to make a donation and one person from Vernon donated $500.

“When we got that donation I started to cry,” Hall said. “The outpouring of support for these dogs has been beyond anything we could have expected.”

Brianne Hawrylenko and her mom Cyndi Assam stopped by the clinic Friday afternoon just to make a donation and to see the famous survivors.

“We are animal lovers ourselves,” says Brianne. “My heart was broken. I don’t understand how someone could do that to an animal.”

“When I heard that Lola passed I started to cry and I just wanted to come down and help out these folks,” Cyndi says. “I’ll never understand something like this. All a puppy wants is love.”

WARNING: GRAPHIC CONTENT

Owners Lyall Grexton and Charlene Wiebe awoke Tuesday morning to find pools of blood in the patio where their three dogs usually sleep. Splatters of blood covered the walls but the dogs themselves were nowhere to be found. Days later, Lyall Grexton is still trying make sense of what he saw.

“We went to search for them… and we found Sheena 400-feet away at the far end of my property right up against the fence,” Grexton says. 

For the man who thinks of his dogs like his children, seeing one of them lying there with multiple wounds from a sharp-edged weapon made him sick to his stomach.

“I thought she was dead," he says. "But I touched her and she lifted her head and looked up at me. At that point I puked."

Dr. Mundi of the Burtch Animal Hospital says Sheena was chopped at least three times.

“The second chop almost took her nose off and exposed her brain," Grexton says. "You could put a softball in the hole. Dr. Mundi took one look at her and said 'Lyall, there’s not a chance.'”

Grexton found his two other dogs, Lola and Rocky, a short distance from Sheena. They too were curled up next to the fence, as far from where they were attacked as they could get. Lola, just a year old, had a deep slash to her haunch and was barely moving. Rocky was slashed closer to the face, his ear barely still attached. Although Dr. Mundi was able to save Rocky and Sheena, Lola lost too much blood and died.

Grexton believes whoever attacked his dogs knew exactly how much they meant to him.

“He knew I love my dogs, they’re like my children,” Grexton says. “If dogs could talk I’m sure they’d say Dad, what did we do to deserve this? That’s what goes through my mind constantly.”

Both Rocky and Sheena are now eating on their own and there does not appear to be any permanent nerve damage. Rocky is expected to return home within the next couple days but Sheena may require one more surgery to remove the wires and reconstruct the eye socket.

To make a donation you can either call the clinic directly or donate via a PayPal account set up by CritterAid.

Photos of the injured dogs have now been posted online. WARNING VERY GRAPHIC CONTENT: The photos of the dogs taken shortly after the attack are extremely difficult to look at but illustrate the extent of their suffering.

To contact the reporter for this story, email Adam Proskiw at aproskiw@infotelnews.ca or call 250-718-0428. To contact the editor, email mjones@infotelnews.ca or call 250-718-2724.