Death of a Dog

Kathleen Callahan remembers the man screaming and punching her dogs.

He skidded his red Chevy truck into Callahan’s Athol driveway, jumped out, leaned over the waist-high chain link fence in her front yard and began beating on Paddee and Gracie.

“I’ll kill these (bleeping) dogs,” he yelled, over and over. “Do you hear me lady?”

One punch caught Paddee, a 10-year-old Australian Shepherd mix, in the eye, causing it to swell — “a black eye for dogs,” an Athol veterinarian later described the wound.

“I keep seeing him yelling, and threatening to kill my dogs,” Callahan said a few days after the attack. “He kept yelling it over and over. And finally he did.”

Two days after the attack, Paddee collapsed in Callahan’s front yard on North Meadow Street. The dog, suspected of consuming rat poisoning, spent two days under veterinary care before being released Tuesday. But the stress and injuries from the ordeal weakened his heart, and Paddee died hours after being back home.

Kootenai County sheriff’s deputies believe the suspect lives blocks away from Callahan, but they don’t have evidence pinning him to the poisoning.

Even if they did, Idaho is one of four states where animal cruelty is a misdemeanor offense.

Now, Callahan, 57, said she’s worried the suspect will go unpunished, while she and her two remaining dogs, Gracie and Charlee, are trapped in her own home.

“I don’t know what I’m going to do,” she said.

Callahan lives alone, is awaiting hip and knee replacement surgery, and calls her dogs her children.

“Now all my neighbors are telling me to get a shotgun. Honestly I don’t know what I’ll do. I’m hysterical. I’m just hysterical,” she said on Tuesday.

Neighbors — many of whom own dogs themselves — are alarmed, too.

“Everybody in the whole neighborhood has dogs, said Suzanne Cutaiar, who has lived a couple houses from Callahan for 16 years. “One of the reasons we live up here is to have dogs. I don’t understand why he picked on her.”

In fact, Cutaiar said, of all the dogs in the neighborhood, Callahan’s were the quietest, spending most of their time inside and sleeping with Callahan.

Cutaiar and Callahan both said a coyote or a wolf had been in the neighborhood at night recently, and several dogs in the neighborhood had been out barking. Callahan said she has one of the few houses in the neighborhood where dogs are in a fenced front yard, just off the road, which could have made them an easier target than other dogs, who are kept in the back yard.

Cutaiar said the whole neighborhood will be more aware of who is driving up and down the street now.

“I think the worst part is we know where he lives,” she said.

The suspect fled from Callahan’s house after the initial beating when Callahan told him she’d called 911. She wrote down the suspect’s license plate number, which deputies used to trace to a house blocks away.

But Kootenai County Animal Control officer Karen Williams said the department has been unsuccessful contacting the suspect, although it turned over the report of the beating to the Kootenai County Prosecutor’s Office. That office will review it to see if animal cruelty charges, which are a misdemeanor in Idaho punishable by up to six months in jail, are warranted.

“I don’t believe we can prove that the original suspect did the poisoning,” Williams said, adding it was a “terrible way for an animal to die.”

“It’s almost something you have to see, to prove,” Williams said.

Callahan had Paddee since the dog was a pup. She’s having Paddee’s remains cremated. Gracie, who came from the same litter as Paddee, has been dragging her dog bed around the house since her sibling passed, and didn’t eat for days afterward.

“I want him prosecuted for poisoning my dogs, for beating up my dogs,” Callahan said of the suspect. “I know the courts don’t think of animals, but for some people that’s all we have.”

But she said she is working with Williams to implement tougher laws in Idaho against animal abuse — even trying to introduce Paddee’s law specifically for tougher penalties.

It’s support Sen. Tim Corder, R-Mountain Home, could use.

Corder tried unsuccessfully to implement tougher laws on animal abuse during this legislative session, targeting repeat offenders among other changes with stiffer penalties.

“The laws in general are weaker than they ought to be,” he said, calling the current laws “a little more than a slap on the hand,” that are “almost impossible to prosecute,” and vowed to continue the fight next session.

Meanwhile, Callahan is moving on, although some habits die hard.

She’s having a hard time remembering to serve meals to two dogs, not three.

“Maybe we can get the laws changed, she said, adding that neighbors have come to her in support and even offered to help pay the more than $1,000 in vet bills the ordeal cost her.

She said she’s thankful for the support.

“Something good is coming out of it,” she said.

Contact: P.O. Box 106, Athol, ID 83801.