A feral dog that has been killing and injuring farm animals — including several at Roots Charter High School — over the past several months was fatally shot by a West Valley Animal Services employee on Thursday morning.
According to a news release from the city, the employee spotted the dog as it was tracking sheep in a pasture. After verifying it was the German shepherd mix officials had been trying to capture for months, the employee shot and killed the dog “safely and humanely” because “efforts to avoid lethal measures and capture the dog were unsuccessful and the dog became increasingly aggressive.”
Roots founding director Tyler Bastian said there’s an “immense feeling of relief” at the school among both faculty and students.
“I’m super relieved. It was hard being the first one in every morning and having to check the farm so that I’d be the one to find the dead animals, not the kids,” he said. "It’ll be nice to get back to educating the kids as opposed to dealing with a stray dog destroying property.”
In addition to killing goats, sheep, chickens, pigs and alpacas — losses that totaled thousands of dollars — there was an unconfirmed report that the dog had become aggressive with a child in the area. The city had ramped up its efforts to capture the dog over the past two months, without success.
