The owner and the handler of a prizewinning Samoyed who died days after the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show suspect the dog was murdered. Cruz, 3, died on February 15th after he began vomiting blood while competing in a dog show in Ohio. One of his owners, Lynette Blue, says she declined an necropsy because she was confident he had been poisoned, and veterinarians say Cruz's manner of death was consistent with rat poisoning, which usually takes three to five days to manifest symptoms. Which would mean he was poisoned in NYC during Westminster.
Who would do such a thing? "Unfortunately, dog shows have been plagued by some of these people for years,” Cruz's handler Robert Chaffin tells the Times. “I’ve heard horror stories about other people’s dogs having their setups tampered with, being poisoned, but I never thought it would come to me.” Indeed, the Times dug into its archives and found this article from 1895, when eight dogs were believed to have been poisoned at Westminster. "Jealousy believed the motive," read the headline.
Chaffin insists he thoroughly checked every square inch of his hotel room for poisons or toxins, and Cruz never left his sight. But he says, "It would have been easy for someone to throw something in his cage" and believes extreme animal rights activists may have killed Cruz to send a message about purebred competitions, which they call inhumane. To that, PETA's founder Ingrid Newkirk replies, "PETA does not sanction that. It’s so scurrilous; it’s so low to even suggest it."
So who did do it? We'll probably never know... But aside from the theory about animal rights activists killing an animal, the Times reports that Chaffin also recalls "a stranger at the Westminster show who glared at him and made a disapproving remark about Cruz’s vocal cords having been removed to quiet his bark." Blue says she reported the dog's suspicious death the to NYPD, but investigators had yet to return her call.
In a statement, the Westminster Kennel Club says:
We are ultra-cautious to the point where we do not allow dogs to be off lead at any time while at our show. After conversation with the co-owner of the dog in question, it was established that the dog left Georgia on Monday and flew to New York, he was exhibited at our show on Tuesday, and flew to Denver on Wednesday morning where he subsequently became ill on Saturday.
Unfortunately, no autopsy was performed, so there are a lot of unanswered questions. No other animal which attended our show was reported to our show veterinarians with any incident of serious illness."
