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Canmore dog sledding company receives death threats in wake of B.C. dog killing

The owners of a dog sled company in Canmore say they’re getting death threats after news broke last week about the alleged slaughter of 100 dogs at a company in Whistler, B.C.

CANMORE — The owners of a dog sled company in Canmore say they’re getting death threats after news broke last week about the alleged slaughter of 100 dogs at a company in Whistler, B.C.

Dana Bittner of Howling Dog Tours in Canmore says it’s possible people are confusing her company with a B.C. company with the same name.

She says she’s received threatening emails and phone calls.

Bittner says she loves her dogs and looks after them, and she’s worried how the Whistler incident will affect the dog sledding industry.

RCMP confirm they are investigating the threats, but say it’s a difficult investigation because they don’t know where the threats came from.

Mounties say it’s possible no one will ever face charges.

Bittner says she’s been accused of being a murderer.

“It gets as bad as saying they want to do to us what was done to the dogs,” she says. “Those are very unpleasant things to be reading.

“I hope that an incident like this involving one person doesn’t taint it for all the other dogs and companies around.”

The Whistler allegations surfaced in leaked workers’ compensation board documents in the case of a worker who filed a claim for post-traumatic stress.

In them, the unidentified man detailed how he shot the dogs last April as business slowed following the 2010 Winter Olympics, and then dumped the bodies in a mass grave.

The dogs were used on tours by Whistler-based Outdoor Adventures, but at the time of the cull the animals were owned and cared for by Robert Fawcett’s Howling Dog Tours.

Outdoor Adventures had a financial stake in the company, but didn’t take control of Howling Dog’s operations until May 2010 — the month following the slaughter.

The B.C. SPCA and the RCMP are investigating the dog cull and the RCMP is also conducting a separate investigation into death threats against Outdoor Adventures employees.

Outdoor Adventures has suspended its dogsledding operations until it completes its own investigation into the cull.