Justice for Dakota: How the death of a German shepherd exposed Ontario’s broken animal welfare system 

Content Warning: This story details graphic examples of alleged animal abuse, including images, that some readers may find upsetting. 

The young German shepherd is bloodied and gasping for breath, in clear distress. 

Thick coagulating blood oozes from cuts in her swollen paws, spreading on the steaming July sidewalk. 

A muzzle holds her mouth tightly shut, with something stuck inside, the edges squeezing out between her clenched teeth. It looks like a plastic bag. 

This is how Melynda Banks found Dakota on the side of a residential street in Niagara Falls over the summer. She first spotted Dakota from her car. Thinking someone’s pet had gotten off leash, she began following the visibly frightened dog darting through traffic. 

As she got closer, a heavy sense of unease sank in her stomach. Banks realized something was horribly wrong. 

A red wire trailed behind Dakota. Metal pipes attached to the end were banging against the sidewalk and the road as she ran.

“They were so loud, extremely loud, like banging and clanking like bells banging behind her,” Banks tells The Pointer. 

She put her hazards on and began following Dakota slowly, not wanting to spook her even more, pushing her into oncoming traffic.

She lost sight of her when Dakota took off down a sidestreet, but she could still hear the clanging of the pipes. 

Banks circled back and found Dakota collapsed on the sidewalk.

Getting out of her car, she brought a bottle of water, knowing the dehydrated dog could not cool down during its ordeal in the oppressively humid July heat. 

Dakota’s lungs heaved for air, but she showed no interest in the water. 

Then Banks noticed the blood. Another passerby stopped and called the local Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (SPCA).

“She just had so much blood on her. She had what looked like a bubble of plastic in her mouth, and then like hard plastic melted on the muzzle, it looked like to me,” Banks recalls. 

With the SPCA ten minutes away, Dakota began to seize against the concrete. Her legs contracted and kicked, smearing blood. The other witness left, unable to watch what would turn out to be Dakota’s final moments.

Banks stayed with her.

“It wasn’t easy. I’m constantly thinking, what could I have done differently?”

Through interviews with witnesses that day, neighbours of Dakota’s owners, and animal welfare advocates, The Pointer has learned that Animal Welfare Services (AWS) had been called multiple times about the living conditions Dakota was subjected to. 

The police and AWS were well aware of the alleged mistreatment of Dakota by her owners through multiple complaints from residents who lived in the same building. 

For months, advocates were left questioning why no action was taken. A look at the systems meant to protect animals in Ontario explains why. 

A disjointed and under-resourced system—Ontario, a province with a population of 15.8 million people, has fewer animal welfare inspectors than Manitoba, which has a population of 1.5 million—is the reason why only ten percent of serious animal cruelty cases result in charges. These are often only provincial offences, not criminal charges despite clear evidence of criminality. 

Animal welfare advocates—most of whom are volunteers, dedicating their evenings and weekends to speak up for those without a voice—have for years tried to force change, but the PC government has repeatedly ignored critically needed investments in the system to improve the lives of abused animals. 

Dakota after collapsing on a sidewalk in Niagara Falls, muzzled and bloodied.

(Facebook)

Dakota’s run through the Niagara Falls suburb was captured in a cell phone video and uploaded to a local Facebook page for lost pets. It enraged the group which along with well-meaning citizens, is populated with dedicated animal rights advocates. 

Following her death, calls for action and “Justice for Dakota” quickly emerged, along with demands for the police or provincial animal welfare officials to hold Dakota’s owner accountable for the torture and suffering she succumbed to that day. Commenters demanded to know how this happened.

“Dakota’s soul cannot rest until there is justice,” one commenter wrote.

Advocates learned Dakota’s body was taken to the Ontario Veterinary College for a necropsy. But for months afterward, there was only silence. 

There was no indication the Niagara Regional Police Service was investigating potential criminal charges, nor whether AWS was considering charges under the Provincial Animal Welfare Services (PAWS) Act. Key witnesses to Dakota’s death, including Banks, to this day, have not been contacted by AWS officials or police to share their stories. 

Advocates identified Dakota’s owner as Niagara Falls resident Carly Young, who began sparring with critics through Facebook posts and comments. 

Neither Carly nor her husband Chris Young replied to multiple requests for comment from The Pointer. 

Cellphone video captures Dakota running down the street, dragging the metal table legs behind her.

(Facebook) 

In several posts written in the days following the incident, both Carly and someone writing on her behalf, claim what happened that July day was a terrible accident. 

“I was sitting at the table with her, she didn’t like loud noises. The cable guy moved his ladder and it made a loud noise and spoked (sic) her and she bolted,” a post from Carly stated. “I was sitting with her and I went after her and she is very fast.”

It’s believed the metal pipes dragging behind her were from the glass table she’d been leashed to, which shattered when she took off. 

She claimed both her and her husband were looking for Dakota. As for the plastic bag in her mouth, “she picked it up on her way to where she was running.”

Someone writing on Carly’s behalf threatened legal action against those demanding accountability for Dakota’s death. 

“Listen to all these nasty messages. People are sending Carly has all been documented and is all with my lawyers,” a post from Carly’s account reads. “All these messages will be investigated. I know Carly is a very good dog owner and dog lover…please don’t come to Carly and say we are unfit dog owners. We love our pets unconditionally. Unconditionally.”

According to Jennifer Sparaga, the smell of dog excrement emanating from the apartment rented by Carly and Chris Young was overbearing. More than once tenants living on the same floor drafted a petition to management, demanding something be done about the odour. 

Sparaga lived next door to Carly and Chris Young and told The Pointer both AWS and the SPCA were called to the apartment about the living conditions Dakota was being subjected to. Several complaints were filed about the dog using the balcony to go to the bathroom, with urine leaking down onto the balcony below.

There was constant screaming, arguing and barking. 

Dakota barked a lot. 

She cried a lot. 

Sparaga could tell when Dakota was locked in the apartment bathroom as their units had a shared wall. 

“They would yell at each other about the dog,” Sparaga recalls.

She would sit with her back to the wall, speaking to Dakota in an attempt to soothe the audibly distressed animal. 

To keep cockroaches and bed bugs from migrating out of the unit into her own, Sparaga would run packing tape along the edges of her apartment door, taping herself and her daughter inside their unit every night. 

Multiple locks on the door prevented management from getting inside to inspect the unit where Dakota lived. 

“I can’t exaggerate it enough, almost every single day, some sort of service was here, and he didn’t always let them in,” Sparaga says, describing ambulances, the fire department and police that were routinely called to the unit but would not be let in. “It was just non-stop chaos.”

Despite animal welfare agencies being well aware of concerns surrounding Dakota’s treatment, no action was taken.

“AWS actually went to the property twice, and did nothing. The health department went, did nothing; bylaw went, did nothing; the police, same thing. Everybody was passing the buck,” Donna Power, a co-founder of the Humane Initiative told The Pointer. The Humane Initiative is a prominent animal welfare organization in Ontario, and immediately began advocating for justice in Dakota’s case in the summer of 2024. “There were other neighbours on that floor that said what Dakota was going through, and nobody would do anything.”

Throughout August and into September, the Humane Initiative tried to get AWS to look into Dakota’s case. Emails were sent to the Ministry of the Solicitor General requesting an investigation, citing the video and graphic images as more than enough evidence to trigger a closer look from AWS officers. 

But there was only silence. 

The dogged advocacy eventually paid off in October when Melanie Milczynski, the Chief Animal Welfare Inspector, agreed to sit down with them to discuss not only Dakota, but a wide range of issues. During that meeting, Milczynski confirmed there was an active investigation into Dakota’s death.

It’s unclear when the investigation began, and what steps had been taken to determine the nature of Dakota’s treatment. Banks, Sparaga and other witnesses, to thie day, have not been interviewed about what they saw. After the meeting, there were months of silence. The Humane Initiative and other advocates continued to push for answers, demanding AWS refer the matter to Niagara Police for an investigation into potential criminal charges.

The police were unable to find any open investigation when contacted by The Pointer, but did not rule out the possibility that they were involved. 

“A colleague and I have both searched and we haven’t been able to find it,” Constable Philip Gavin stated in an email response. “That isn’t to say 100% we were not involved…If you have more information such as the names of the persons involved, I can search further.”

Despite providing the names of Dakota’s owners, Niagara Police did not respond to further requests for information.

On January 14, The Pointer contacted the Ministry of the Solicitor General for an update into any ongoing investigation into Dakota’s case. The next day, spokesperson Brent Ross stated that four charges were now being laid against Carly under the PAWS Act for permitting distress to an animal, “exposure to undue risk of distress”; and not providing basic standards of care.

“Given this matter is now before the court, it would be inappropriate for the ministry to provide further detail,” Ross stated. 

The charges have not been proven in court. Carly is set to make her first appearance at the Welland courthouse on February 25th. 

Having charges laid in Dakota’s case is a significant victory for those who have fought for justice on her behalf since August. 

Animal abuse cases rarely get this far in Ontario. 

According to the limited data provided by AWS, of the 2,893 cases where the abuse was so egregious the animal had to be removed from the owner’s care, only 10 percent of those (296) resulted in charges being laid. Of the nearly 40,000 calls received at the Ontario Animal Protection Call Centre, 57 percent of them are closed without any inspection, follow-up, or investigation being completed. 

Even when the abuse is documented and publicized, like in Dakota’s case, it takes months of loud public outrage to see any results. 

“It wasn’t until we were screaming and making these posts that they did anything,” Power said. Her advocacy has taught her this is the only way to see action in Ontario because sadly, the silence on Dakota was not an isolated incident. 

“We’ve got four stories just like this on the go right now. This is not isolated,” she said. 

There’s the case of Kippen Care in Hamilton. A dog-sitting business run by Jessica Kippen was subjected to complaints from neighbours. 

The business was unlicensed on the residential property, and the number of dogs being held in the home was a clear bylaw violation and the loud, constant barking plagued neighbors. 

Between June 2021 and June 2024 there were constant complaints, but Hamilton bylaw and AWS did nothing.

Then in June of last year, the deaths started to be uncovered. One pet owner was informed her bulldog had died while at the unlicensed kennel, the body placed in a freezer. 

Throughout the summer the Humane Initiative and local advocates hosted a number of demonstrations, including outside the Kippen home and at Hamilton Police headquarters. They were told no investigation is happening. 

In October, they learned AWS officers were interviewing people about the case, but that Hamilton Police had not been contacted about the potential for criminal charges. 

In December, AWS announced that 96 charges have been laid against Kippen in relation to the deaths of five dogs and two dozen animals placed in distress. The charges have not been tested in court. A pretrial is set for February 27. 

“Kippen never would have been investigated if there was no public outrage, same with Dakota. Nothing would have happened,” Power says. 

Then there’s the case of Neil Stratford. 

In June 2023, Stratford was filmed hitting and dragging his bull terrier Merlin down a Hamilton sidewalk for over 100 metres. Videos of the incidents were viewed more than 50,000 times. 

Despite multiple requests, the Hamilton police said they were not investigating. 

Advocates launched a flurry of calls to AWS, and after nine days, Merlin was removed from the home. 

In August of that year, AWS laid three PAWS Act charges against Stratford. But the minor offenses were an insult to advocates as the video clearly showed wilful acts of cruelty to Merlin which appeared to rise to the level of criminality. 

Anyone who “wilfully causes or, being the owner, wilfully permits to be caused unnecessary pain, suffering or injury to an animal” is guilty of animal cruelty under the Criminal Code of Canada.

After repeated requests for updates about Merlin, the Ministry of the Solicitor General informed advocates in 2024 that the dog had died. No further information was offered. 

Cellphone video shows Neil Stratford dragging Merlin down a Hamilton street in 2023.

(Facebook)

All these cases are evidence of a system that is completely broken, Power says. Police, bylaw and AWS – prongs of a system that are meant to work together to ensure animals are kept safe, live in a clean environment, and hold violators accountable – often do not communicate with one another, and sometimes shuck responsibility off to one of the other agencies. Complaints routinely fall into limbo, forgotten and ignored. 

“It’s an epic failure right across the board,” Power says. In Ontario, AWS has approximately 100 officers—the Province has never publicly stated how many officers there actually are—responsible for inspecting complaints. These 100 officers are meant to handle hundreds of investigations a year and offer effective services to Ontario’s 15.8 million people. 

Manitoba, with a population of 1.5 million people, and a smaller geographic area, has 105 animal welfare officers. 

Power says despite multiple requests from advocates and government staff, the PC government has refused to invest in more resources. 

“Doug Ford is building these flippin’ highways and doing all this stuff, meanwhile the bare bones of the system are falling apart,” Power says. “There’s no way in this world that Manitoba has the same number of animal welfare workers and they’re one tenth the size.”

The failure within the system, while repeatedly raised by advocates, is contradicted by statements from the Ontario government, which routinely claims the province has some of the strictest animal welfare laws in the country. 

“It’s all song and dance,” Power says. “This is why we’re so vocal, people really need to know what’s going on.”

Nowhere was this more clear than the rollout last year of Ontario’s new legislation which the PC government claimed would put an end to puppy mills in the province. 

The appropriately named PUPS Act (Preventing Unethical Puppy Sales) was marketed as the battering ram that would knock down the barriers to identifying puppy mills in Ontario and enforcing standards of cleanliness and safety upon all breeders. 

It was anything but. 

The government has little understanding of the true scale of the problem in the province as there are no reliable statistics on the number of puppy mills currently operating, and there is nothing in the legislation that will help identify them. While the new penalties the law creates could certainly act as a deterrent, the standards they apply to are vague, superficial and completely inadequate, advocates have complained, making them nearly impossible to enforce. 

The government is attempting to close puppy mills by increasing fines on standards that are difficult to enforce, for puppy mill operations they do not know the locations of.

The vague, disjointed legislation mirrors the animal welfare system at large, Power says. 

“It’s a puzzle and the pieces needed to come together, but they’re all floating all over, and no one is talking to each other and no one knows what their role is.”

Jennifer Sparaga was forced to move to a different unit in her building. The situation had just become too much. 

The lack of action by agencies responsible for keeping Dakota safe, the constant stress from the noise and other incidents and the memories of Dakota’s cries, have left her believing the entire animal welfare system is broken. 

“I have zero faith,” she tells The Pointer. 

Power, a dedicated advocate, believes change is possible—she has to in her line of work—and the small victories, like potential justice for Dakota, are worth celebrating. 

But the real goal is to stop other vulnerable animals from ending up like Dakota. That requires systemic change. 

“Her death is horrible, but the story is the failure of the system to protect her.”

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