Robert Read and his service dog Juno have been side-by-side for the last year and a half. Wherever he goes, so does Juno. But they are both struggling to trust the world around them.
Around a month ago, Read said he walked into Dynamic Training Centre, on Hodgson Road in Fredericton, where a U-Haul Neighborhood Dealer is also located. He was going to help his son’s friend tow a trailer.
Read and Juno, a border collie mix, walked into the building, which he said has the gym on one side and the U-Haul on the other. He heard his son’s friend talking and followed his voice into what he said appeared to be a small hallway.
According to Read, that’s when a pit bull bounded down the hall and started attacking Juno, who was leashed.
“I wasn’t really sure what to do. I’m sort of in a little bit of a shock because I didn’t want to stick my hand in the middle of it because obviously that’s, you know, that’s how you get bit,” Read said.
“But I was like, Oh my god, my dog is, she was screeching, and I picked her up and she had been bitten on the face and bitten pretty severely. And then his dog took off.”
CBC News made repeated attempts on Friday to contact the owner of the Dynamic Training Centre. Pat Corkum acknowledged the request in an email but did not address the specific allegations and referred further questions to his lawyer, who did not respond to an email on Monday.
Also on Monday, CBC News once again asked Corkum if he’d be interested in speaking, as well as requesting access to video evidence Corkum, in his original reply, said he had.
Read said he started panicking and rushed Juno to his truck and he took her to the closest emergency vet.
Read’s son’s friend, Nevan Whynot, who was at the front desk at the time of the attack, said he didn’t even think to warn Read about the dog when he first saw it.
He said he heard one growl from the dog and when he looked, the dog had “snapped onto Juno.”
Whynot said he was frightened during the event, especially when he saw the amount of blood.
“I’ve never seen so much blood in my life,” he said.
After Read took Juno to the vet, Whynot said he started talking to the owner and was trying his best to stay calm.
Now, every couple of days, he said he calls Read to ensure Juno is doing ok and hasn’t developed an infection.
“It’s just been like always in the back of my mind,” said Whynot.
PTSD service dog
Read adopted Juno from the Oromocto SPCA and named her after Juno Beach, one of the places where allied troops landed at Normandy in the Second World War. Read was in the Canadian military for 20 years and suffers from PTSD, which is why Juno is so important to him.
She’s endured constant training to be his one-on-one service animal — performing tasks such as reminding Read to take his medication, alerting him to early signs of anxiety, carrying his asthma medication at all times and creating space around him when in public spaces.
When Read took Juno to the vet after the attack, he said they recorded lacerations to Juno’s face, lips and tongue, and cleaned up a puncture wound on Read’s leg that he assumes happened during the altercation at the dealership, but didn’t notice until after he had left.
Read’s wife then took Juno home while he went back to the dealership with the $450 vet bill. If the owner had paid the vet bill, he said he would have dropped the matter. But Read alleges that the owner refused to pay, so he called the police, who alerted animal control, and made a report.
In an email, the Fredericton Police Force confirmed they received a call on June 3 and that animal control was notified to deal with the situation.
Read said he has put in calls to U-Haul corporate and the City of Fredericton, but he says that hasn’t yielded any action.
‘Not franchisees’
U-Haul media manager Jeff Lockridge said in an email that “neighborhood dealers are not franchisees. They are simply independent local small businesses that have chosen to partner with U-Haul to rent our moving equipment and earn commissions off those transactions to supplement their business’s income.”
Because of this, Lockridge said the businesses are managed and staffed by the business owner, not by U-Haul.
The City of Fredericton communications manager, Wayne Knorr, said in an email they are aware of the matter, including initial dealings with animal control as well as a recent contact with the city clerk’s office. He said discussions are expected to continue and sent a link to the current animal control bylaw.
The bylaw has rules pertaining to dogs not being allowed to bite or attempt to bite “a person,” dogs off premises and “dangerous dogs.”
The term dangerous dog in the bylaw refers to any dog that has “attacked a person or has killed, bitten or injured another animal; that is attack trained; that is kept for the purpose of security or protection of persons or property; or that has shown the disposition or tendency to be threatening or aggressive.”
- Veteran pushes for harsher penalties after service dog attacked by another dog
- ‘I just lost my dog violently’: Pet owners struggle with grief, trauma after dog attacks
Dangerous dogs must be “securely confined indoors or in a securely enclosed and locked pen or structure” when on the owner’s property, and a sign must be displayed on the property warning people about a dangerous dog inside.
But the bylaw does not mention specific breeds and it’s unknown whether this dog would be considered a dangerous dog according to the bylaw. Read said he did not see any signs on the property about a dog inside.
Michael Murphy, a personal injury and disability lawyer with Mike Murphy Law Group in Moncton and the former justice minister for the province, said when someone has a dog off-leash that is known to have the natural tendency to bite, the owner of the dog is liable for the damages.
Murphy said when it comes to pit bulls, he believes they are dangerous and aggressive by nature. He said he has many cases involving pit bulls and that they have “done horrific damages to my clients, to their lives, to their children.”
“I have cases involving people with off-leash dogs inside of their own premises. That’s not a problem. It’s a problem when you invite other people into your property and that happens,” said Murphy.
‘He’ll never trust another dog again’
Ronald Murray, owner of Leidenschaft Kennels and volunteer trainer with Canines for PTSD, is Juno’s trainer and said getting her back to how she was before the alleged attack is going to require extensive socialization with other dogs.
He said when a dog is attacked, it can have serious mental health consequences.
“The dog can develop PTSD from it. He’ll never want to enter that building again. He’ll never trust another dog again. And that’s a big problem because service dogs must all work together in one big group,” said Murray.
“Juno now has this leeriness about working beside another dog and with good reason. … If you walk into a bar and somebody attacks you and beats the hell out of you, you’re not going to want to go back in there.”
According to the Guideline on Accommodating People with Service Animals from the New Brunswick Human Rights Commission, under provincial human rights law, a service provider “cannot prevent a person relying on a service animal from accessing spaces customarily available to other members of the public” or “require that the service animal remain outside or off the premises while providing the service,” among other things.
Murray said people with service dogs should be able to travel as freely as everyone else and they shouldn’t have to worry about their service dog being attacked.
“If this dog cannot continue with her job, Rob has got to start all over again,” he said. “Over a year wasted down the drain.”
Since the attack, Read said Juno is different. As soon as she walks in somewhere, she becomes nervous, he said.
“As terrible as this sounds, I can’t walk into a business anymore. I have to leave her in the truck and go look first,” said Read. “I have to go … and say, ‘Do you guys have a dog loose in here?’ And people look at me like, ‘What?'” he said.
“It’s left me not really wanting to go anywhere and not wanting to take her anywhere … for fear of her getting injured again.”
This story was originally published in CBC News on July 11, 2023.
Hannah Rudderham Portfolio 