The Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show finished up last month in New York City after crowing a champion, but one owner is calling foul play after his dog died just four days after the event.
According to ABCNews.com, Cruz, a 3-year-old Samoyed who was in the dog show for the first time, died in mid-February while competing in a dog show in Colorado, just four days after the Westminster show ended. The report says that both the dog's co-owner, Lynette Blue, and his handler, Robert Chaffin, feel that foul play was involved and that the dog was poisoned.
"We have gone through all the steps of where he was, what was done, and he was always on a leash," Blue, 67, who has co-owned Cruz since birth and has raised and shown the fluffy, snow-white breed of dogs since the 1960s, told ABC News today. "He was never outside. He was always with the handler."
The name Cruz is short for GCH CH Polar Mist Cruz'N T'Party At Zamosky D and the dog passed away at the 18th Annual Rocky Mountain Cluster Dog Show in Denver. The dog reportedly got sick and vomited blood at the event before being taken to a veterinary clinic, where the dog passed away due to internal hemorrhaging. The report says that the animal was cremated and a necropsy was not performed.
"We can't figure out a timeline where it could have happened while he was in the room or being walked," said Blue, who said she had no insurance policy on Cruz.
The reason why foul play is suspected has to do with the fact that medical experts say that internal hemorrhaging and the blood are both symptoms of rodenticide, or rat poisoning. The report says that the manager of the hotel where the Cruz and Chaffin stayed in New York said that the hotel does not use rat poisoning, making the owner wonder how the dog ingested the substance.
The dog was also reported to not have walked outside in any city parks during its time in New York, according to Blue. The ABC report says that Dr. Tony Johnson, a clinical assistant professor of emergency medicine at Purdue University College of Veterinary Medicine, said that the symptoms could possibly be related to natural causes.
"Two of the things that will cause bleeding in the abdomen are cancer and rat poisoning and people often attribute it to poisoning as opposed to cancer," he said. "We see a lot of dogs that have bleeding in their abdomen due to cancer so that is a possibility."
Blue said she "absolutely" does not suspect the handler as having a part in the dog's death, but the situation brings up a host of questions about what happened. Blue said that there was a four hour period where the dog could have been poisoned at that she at one point got in a confrontation with an animal rights activist that she said "was just scowling at me and telling me how cruel I was."
