Dog owners on alert as raw meat allegedly found at Winnipeg park

Winnipeg dog owners are on high alert after raw meat was allegedly found scattered around Kilcona Dog Park over the last week.

“It’s not fair for the dog owners, it’s not fair for the dogs and it’s not fair for the community,” said Jennifer Wowryk.

The Winnipeg woman — owner of two dogs and foster for Manitoba Underdogs Rescue and Manitoba Great Pyrenees Rescue — says she had a serious scare last year while walking her dogs in the Windsor Park neighbourhood.

“(My husband and I are) quite vigilant dog owners. So while we’re walking we notice that my big girl, Roxy, grabbed a piece of meat or something. And of course when a dog sees something they find it long before you find it. So she grabbed it, put it in her mouth. We tried to get it out, she spit it out,” said Wowryk.

“We had a good dog walk and then a few hours after the dog walk, she ended up kind of acting funny … Throughout the night it got worse and worse and we got up three to four times throughout the night and she had nausea, vomiting. She was whining.”

Wowryk said by the morning, Roxy was vomiting “huge amounts of blood,” so the family rushed her to the vet.

“(We) found out there would be no reason for a dog her age to have been that sick that quick, unless she was poisoned,” said Wowryk.

Wowryk says Roxy took weeks to recover with medication, constant monitoring and check-ins with the vet. She says after reports of more meat allegedly being found at Kilcona Dog Park, she’s not surprised — she herself has found more meat in parks since and heard similar stories from other dog owners.

“Once we ended up being in the situation where we were out walking again, we did talk to many people in the community and their dogs had nausea and vomiting that week. They were all in the same park,” she said.

Wowryk, who describes herself as an active member of the dog community, says she’s now on high alert every time she’s out for a walk with her animals. She says every time one of her dogs bows their head down to the ground, she tries to quickly get them back up.

“It’s really not fun to not be able to walk around your community and feel like you can’t just walk your dogs and not worry about anything,” Wowryk said.

CityNews reached out to the person who originally posted the photos of meat allegedly found at Kilcona Dog Park, but they declined an interview.

The Winnipeg Police Service says no reports have been made about meat found at Kilcona Dog Park through a formal complaint at this time.