A woman from San Ramon has said that her beloved pet dog was killed by a dog trainer while the family was on a vacation. It’s not the dog trainer that had done the killing, but her own dog. The woman’s second dog was critically injured in the same incident.
Jane Cresswell says that the medical bills for the second dog have reached the stunning $26,000 and keep rising.
She insists that the dog trainer pays for them.
Cresswell was on a European vacation together with her family and had left her two bichon poodles to a dog trainer. Kenzie was the dog that was killed and Dolly suffered serious injuries from the attack by the trainer’s dog.
In front of ABC7 News Cresswell said that she had paid $2,000 for the trainer’s services for 18 days. Dawn Smith, as the trainer is called, owns the Tri Valley East Bay Dog Trainer business. Initially, after the incident, she told Cresswell that Kenzie was killed by a pit bull during a walk in the park.
Later, however, she admitted that her own dog attacked the two bichon poodles while Smith was out of her home. Dolly underwent multiple life-saving surgeries, including a tracheotomy.
“She will never be the same,” Cresswell said. “She has a gaping hole in her neck. When she drinks water, the water comes out of it.”
So far Creswell has been unable to collect payment from Smith for the vet bills of Dolly. Smith says she paid $1,500 when she took Dolly to the hospital, however, she doesn’t seem to have the funds to cover the rest of the bills.
“I was horrified at what happened,” she said.
Smith also said that she’s no longer in business and she has “no income to pay for those expenses.” Still, she’s willing to look for a financial agreement with Cresswell. The two dogs’ owner says that the money isn’t even her main concern – she intends to fight for more governmental regulations of dog training and dog sitting businesses so that her tragedy doesn’t happen to other people.
