Three dogs in a single neighborhood died after eating cut-up hot dogs laced with pesticides, according to their owners in the Southern California city of Chula Vista.
Residents of the Otay Ranch neighborhood believe their dogs were poisoned intentionally. The owners say someone cut up tainted hot dogs and threw the pieces into families' backyards for their animals to find.
The Frank family — whose dog, Stella, died April 13 — is offering a $500 reward to anyone with information leading to an arrest.
"She started to get violently ill," Kayre Frank said of Stella. "She was kind of shaking and it was weird that she would lay down like that… she wasn't responding to me and so I got down and looked at her. She didn't look good, she was foaming and she was shaking."
Frank took Stella to the vet to undergo testing. At that point, Stella was unable to breathe on her own.
"He said it looked like sausage," Frank told NBC 7. "I don't have anything like that in the house so I knew that something was up… Someone had clearly put poison in a hot dog."
Eventually, the family decided to put her down. Stella would have been 5 years old next month.
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"Somebody took the time to obtain this chemical, to put it in a hot dog, to throw it over the fence — obviously knowing we had a dog. Two dogs," Frank said. "You're sad, you're devastated and then you're angry because you know that somebody did this on purpose."
Neighbor Adrianna Martinez lost both her dogs April 8.
"He ran up into my bed and was crying, crying and I never heard him cry that way," Martinez said of her golden retriever, Nala, who then collapsed. "He didn't have control of his body anymore… He threw up a wiener with black inside of it."
She said her mother’s dog, Henny, began having seizures and could barely breathe. Both were rushed to the vet, where Nala died in Martinez's arms "like it was too late."
"Within an hour... they were gone," she said.
Nala was turning 3 and Henny was not yet 1.
"It's like I lost my little brother and sister," Martinez told NBC 7.
Once again, the vet said pesticide was to blame.
"Whoever did this has a personal problem with dogs... It’s evil. You know, you just don't do that to an animal," Martinez added.
Chula Vista police are investigating, and fliers are now posted throughout the neighborhood warning other dog owners of the danger to their pets.
