SHADY COVE, Ore.-A neighbor's dog followed Kelli and Richard Tuvako's cat, Bootsie, into their home and killed her in their dining room.
Kelli Tuvako said Bootsie was laying out in the sun and as it set, the cat went inside to call it a day. A neighbor's Chow-Retriever mix went in after Bootsie.
The owner had left her sliding glass door open just enough for her cat to step in. When Kelli Tuvako heard the door pushed open a bit more, she thought it was her husband coming home.
Kelli said she was in shock when she stepped in the room to find a dog she had never seen before shaking her cat in its jaws. She yelled for help, but no one came.
Kelli said she did all she could to stop the dog, even hit it with a broom, but nothing worked.
She grabbed the dog by its harness and dragged it outside.
Once outdoors, Bootsie was finally released, no longer alive, but the dog continued to hover over her still body.
Kelli said a young man, the dog sitter, followed her screams and finally found the dog.
He tied a rope around the dog's harness and dragged her away from the cat.
The owner said though she's devastated, she has learned something from this experience. "So I'd like to meet with my neighbors and I recommend other neighborhoods do this because if this had been a man murdering me instead of a dog murdering a cat um, nobody would've come. [...] I'd like to get together with them and form a plan [...] and then the issue with the training of the dog. I think that's really important too. [...] They have lots of schools, lots of different ways you can, there's books, available, there's a lot of different things that you can do to train your dog," said Kelli Tuvako.
The Tuvakos said, their first instinct is to put the dog down because it murdered a member of their family. They said they have had Bootsie for about 15 years.
The Jackson County Sheriff's Office responded to the call and said perhaps the dog could be "retrained."
The Tuvakos said it is a difficult decision to make and they are glad they are not the ones who have to make that call.
Animal Control was closed for the weekend, so the deputy took the dog to a nearby fire station until her owners are back in town.
The Tuvakos said the dog sitter told them he was out fishing and tied the dog to a stake in the ground by her harness. He said she got away, tempted by a flock of geese.
The cat owners said they could tell the young man was very sorry for what had occurred.
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