Deliberate poisoning of dogs at Crufts?

[Tobi]

A beautiful Irish Setter dies after being at Crufts Dog Show in Birmingham

http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/...ter-crufts

Now there is news of a second dog falling ill:

https://uk.news.yahoo.com/police-probe-c...ml#gfbvGOW

Who could do this to any dogs??

[LPC]

Hmmm, a good question. Nobody seems to know, but the current opinion is that it wasn't a rival breeder but someone with a grudge against dogs or Crufts: http://www.usmagazine.com/celebrity-news...ion-201593

I'm amazed that it wasn't caught on camera. After all, there are enough cameras at Cruft's all the time.

[Catherine]

I heard about this on the news. What a terrible tragedy to lose the dog and it is so much worse since it was deliberately done.

I hope the toxicology report gives them some idea of who might have been able to get the poison. I hope they find the killer. Certainly it is going to make pedigree dog owners nervous. I wouldn't even guess at who or why someone would do this. It is just too bizarre.

[LPC]

It looks likely that two other dogs were also poisoned - thankfully, not with loss of mortality. CCTV is being examined; that might well give some clues. An update is here: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/c...rival.html

[Knight of Albion]

A rival breeder one would expect. Big money in all of this, people don't realise. As I was just saying to someone this morning, money does things to people, can turn them horrible, make them do things they wouldn't otherwise dream of doing.

[Tobi]

Yes, Knight -it is saddening to see how people can be corrupted by money. Some quite generally 'nice' people can change their characters very suddenly when money, fame, etc are involved.

I am glad the CCTV footage is being scrutinised. I would imagine with careful scrutiny, it should be quite easy to pinpoint anyone who slips food to Jagger, and the others while they are on the benches. Identifying that person may be harder though, but not impossible.

I hope the other dogs will recover well.
But my kindest thoughts to Jagger, and to his people who must be devastated.

I hope this dog-murderer is brought to justice.

[Catherine]

It is shocking that anyone would go so far as to kill a dog. Jealousy and the desire to win seem to make people lose all sense of reason.

Money could well be part of the motivation. You add jealousy to greed and I guess there is nothing a person wouldn't do.

I hope they find out who did this. It is important to bring them to justice. It won't bring back Jagger, but it will give them closure to some degree.

[LPC]

The latest news is that the vet who treated the dog doubts that he was poisoned at Crufts, because of the timescale involved. See the BBC article at http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-birmingham-31829037

I have a strange feeling that there is something sinister about this case, not poisoning by a jealous rival - which seems to be the obvious reason at first sight.

[Tobi]

Yes, something about the timing wasn't making sense to me either. I thought -if he ate the meat at Cruft's, and it was many hours later, and back in Belgium when he fell suddenly ill, then why such a long delay? And why did the post mortem still find meat in his stomach in a pretty intact condition, after all those hours? Usually by that time it wouldn't still be in the stomach.

Then just now I found this:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-...-show.html

The vet now thinks he probably wasn't poisoned at Crufts. And the meat contained some small black pellets commonly used in agriculture as a pesticide.

[Catherine]

There seems to be a lot of rumor and speculation and hearsay.
I think it will be impossible to sort out the truth until the lab result are in.
The only thing that is clear is the fact that Jagger died of poison and of course they know when he died. The meat in his stomach was the source of the poison. I am surprized that he was cremated when there is an investigation going on. What if they need to re-examine tissues or do further tests?

It would be odd if there was undigested meat in his stomach from the day before. Was he not fed in that length of time? I don't know how long it takes a dog to digest food, but they seem to be always hungry so it must be pretty fast. The dog could have eaten the meat on his last walk. Maybe the poison was put out to kill unwanted animals. Some people do poison what they like to think of as vermin. An unsuspecting dog would eat any meat he found.

I wonder if there is any proof to the rumors about other dogs being sick?