The Kaohisung District Court on Wednesday charged a 28-year-old woman, surnamed Teng (鄧), with a violation of the Animal Protection Act (動物保護法) after finding that she had stabbed her boyfriend’s dog.
According to the court notice, Teng could not tolerate the dog — a chow chow — barking at her. She stabbed it in the chest with a knife, killing it instantly.
Police said Teng and her boyfriend, surnamed Cheng (鄭), lived in Lingya District (苓雅) and from what they have been able to gather, the two had argued constantly over the dog.
At 6am on March 21, the chow chow had again been barking, which prompted Teng to stab the dog in the chest. The wound was 20cm deep and reached the dog’s heart. Cheng had called the police after finding its body lying on the living room floor.
Although police said Teng had admitted the act in initial questioning, she denied the charge in court, saying that the dog bit her hand and leg, adding that she had poked it in the rump with a knife to get it to back off.
Cheng said Teng was lying, saying he had raised the chow chow for one or two years and that the dog was an adult and would not bite anyone.
The prosecutor in charge of the case had pulled Teng’s medical files from the hospital, which said that the doctor had not been able to identify wounds consistent with those from a dog bite.
The autopsy performed on the dog by the municipal government’s Animal Protection Office confirmed that the cause of death was a wound to the chest and not the rump.
The prosecutor dismissed Teng’s testimony and charged her with violation of the act, asking for a summary on Wednesday.
Additional reporting by Huang Chien-hua and Huang Hsu-lei
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