A Montreal family is considering filing a lawsuit against a local kennel after it told them their five year-old shih-tzu, Stanley, had run away - something which they later learned was not the case.
The Rangers' dog was dropped off last Tuesday at the kennel for a couple of hours of doggie day care. But before the family could go pick up their dog, they received a call from the kennel saying the kennel had lost Stanley.
Devastated, the family plastered neighbourhood streets with pictures of Stanley, hoping he would turn up. The kennel also even put up a $5,000 reward for whoever found the dog.
But it wasn't until the family hired Eric Dussault, a pet rescue and retrieval expert, that the investigation took a turn.
Dussault went around the neighborhood collecting surveillance video, and told the kennel he was going to bring by a sniffer dog. He believes that's when the kennel knew its story was falling apart.
Within a couple of hours, the kennel's owners called the family to tell them the truth.
"I got the confession that Stanley had never gone missing, and that he had been killed on the premises by a number of dogs in an act of cannibalism, essentially," says the dog owner's son, Marc Ranger.
Global News tried to speak to the kennel's owners, but our calls were not returned.
We're told the kennel owners told the family they lied to spare them the trauma of finding out how Stanley was killed.
Dussault, who picked up the dog's body for the family, says there were limbs missing.
The kennel's website says dogs are segregated based on size, but in this case, something must have gone wrong.
The Rangers met with a lawyer Thursday. They say they're not after money, they just want to make sure it doesn't happen again.
With files from Mike Armstrong, Global News
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