‘Justice was not served’: Grieving pet owner speaks out after hunter sentenced for shooting dogs

The owner of two dogs who were shot and killed last year says the punishment the hunter received was too lenient. Bryan Bicknell reports.

A grieving pet owner from Elgin County believes justice has been denied after a local hunter was given a financial penalty and had his hunting licence suspended for a shooting incident that left her pet dogs dead.

“Unimaginable to say the least. Half my family died that day,” said Belmont area resident Kaitlin Strong.

On Feb. 8, 2025, Strong had let her German shepherds Hank and Mary Jane out to play in the fields and wooded area on her and her husband’s five-acre property.

Approximately 15 minutes later she heard gunfire, which would not have been unusual because of hunters frequenting the area.

When the dogs didn’t return, she searched frantically for them, finding only blood splattered in the snow.

Strong didn’t know it at the time, but the dogs had been shot and killed, mistaken for coyotes.

This week a 27-year-old hunter from Aylmer was handed a $3,000 fine and had his hunting licence suspended for a year after pleading guilty to two charges stemming from the incident.

“My husband and I both agree that justice was not served,” Strong said.

An investigation by the Ministry of Natural Resources (MNR) found the hunter had been out with a group but was alone when he fired the fatal shots. He took the dogs’ bodies from the field where they were killed and took them home.

He reported the incident to the MNR two days later.

“That was almost the worst part of it. That we had to wait those two days, not really knowing if our dogs had been dumped in a ditch somewhere, or bleeding out somewhere. We were actively searching for them for the entire two days, and they were sitting dead in his garage,” Strong said.

Despite it all, Strong says she supports hunting. She just wants the laws to be followed.

“Myself, and a lot of the people from the community that I’ve spoken to, they agree that hunting is fine, but we just want some kind of law and order, and we just want some kind of deterrent from breaking that and order. And that’s not, unfortunately, what we’ve accomplished here,” she said.