SURREY, B.C. — Applause broke out in a Surrey courtroom Wednesday as a former dog walker who had six animals die of heat stroke in the back of her truck last year was led away to begin serving a six-month jail sentence.
Emma Maria Paulsen, 38, pleaded guilty in November to causing an animal to continue to be in distress and to public mischief for reporting an offence committed when it was not.
On May 13, 2014, Paulsen went shopping at Costco in Richmond and left six dogs in the back of her truck, which was covered by a canopy. When she returned to her truck after about 40 minutes, she found that the dogs, including her own animal, were dead.
Paulsen panicked and drove to Abbotsford, where she dumped the dogs’ bodies in a ditch. She then concocted a story that she told to the dogs’ owners, police and the media.
Paulsen said she had taken the dogs to an off-leash park in the Brookswood area of Langley and played with them that day. She said she put them in the back of her truck while she went to the washroom, and when she returned the canopy was unlatched and the dogs were missing.
The lie kicked off days of searching by dog owners, members of the public and a professional pet-search company. Paulsen’s story began to unravel when the owner of Petsearchers Canada suspected she was not telling the truth. She admitted the dogs were dead, but didn’t tell police until they came to her home on May 19.
The dogs’ bodies were recovered from the ditch the next day.
Necropsies showed they had pulmonary congestion and red skin, consistent with heat stroke. An animal behaviour and welfare expert said that the dogs’ state of physical and emotional distress would have been “extremely high†before they died.
Paulsen had previously left dogs in her truck when she went horseback riding or ran errands, even though others had told her she shouldn’t. Paulsen didn’t take the warnings seriously and didn’t believe there was any harm in leaving the dogs in her truck for short periods of time.
Her lawyer argued she did not intend to cause harm and was not thinking rationally because of emotional distress and alcohol abuse.
Judge James Jardine agreed, saying Paulsen’s actions were distracted, thoughtless negligence in circumstances where she was emotionally upset and very self-centred.
“Ms. Paulsen did not intentionally kill her own dog Salty or the others. She did not want them to suffer and die,†he said.
However, he said that does not excuse her conduct or failure to look after the animals in her care.
“Her actions in leaving them in the heat of the truck in the middle of the day constituted more than mere negligence, in my opinion. Her actions constituted repeated risk-taking,†Jardine said.
Particularly aggravating in the case was Paulsen’s post-offence conduct, both on the day of the incident and in the following days.
Victim-impact statements written by the dog owners outlined the effect of her actions.
Jardine said the statements were difficult to read, and “graphically and eloquently†expressed the pain, anger, loss, outrage and sense of betrayal felt by the dogs’ owners.
“First (Paulsen) failed them and their dogs by failing to keep them safe. Then by lying to avoid the potential ramifications of what she had done, she extended their emotional upset by deceiving them,†Jardine said.
Paulsen’s sentence will be followed by two years of probation. Jardine also ordered that Paulsen be banned from owning animals for 10 years and banned for life from operating a business caring for others’ animals.
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