A Darien man had his German shepherd dog euthanized last month after the animal got off-property in eastern New Canaan and attacked two dogs walking past, severely injuring one of them.
The incident unfolded on Thayer Pond Road on the morning of Friday, Jan. 3, according to a New Canaan Police Department case report obtained by NewCanaanite.com through a public records request.
The owners of the two victim dogs—a Cockapoo and Cocker spaniel—also were injured as they tried to protect their own pets from the large black German shepherd named “Crypto,” according to the incident report from Officer Allyson Halm, head of the NCPD Animal Control section. Crypto was about 13 months old, officials said.
The owners of the victim dogs—women who live on the Wilton stretch of Thayer Pond Road—told police they’d been leash-walking their pets along the residential street when one of two large off-leash dogs (Crypto) with a cone around its head began to attack the Cockapoo. The Cockapoo escaped his collar and ran away—though police later saw blood on his back—and Crypto then went after the Cocker spaniel and bit the animal’s owner when she tried to protect it. She was treated for a bite wound at an urgent care facility in Norwalk, and the spaniel was treated for minor abrasions and bruising, the report said.
The Cockapoo went to an emergency animal hospital in Norwalk and had to undergo surgery. He “had several drains placed on his back and will take time to recover,” Halm said in the report. The Cockapoo’s owner also “indicated that she was bruised all over her body and her clothes were torn from fighting off the offending dog,” the report said.
It wasn’t clear how the German shepherd dog got out—when police knocked on the door of the Thayer Pond Road home where Crypto’s owner had been staying, he appeared to have been sleeping, and he told police that a woman had been in charge of caring for the dogs, according to Halm’s report.
During an interview Crypto’s owner contacted both women to apologize and offer to cover all medical expenses. He agreed to have Crypto go into a 10-day quarantine, a required by state law, at a Ridgefield animal hospital.
The spaniel’s owner told police during a Jan. 6 follow-up interview “that she has been emotionally drained from this incident and her continued concerns regarding the safety of the neighborhood when the dog returns after the quarantine.”
On Jan. 7, Crypto’s owner told police that he decided to have the dog euthanized, the report said. Postmortem testing showed that Crypto didn’t have rabies, officials said.