Dogs allegedly pepper sprayed on North Vancouver trail

The owner of a North Shore dog walking group is speaking after three of their dogs were allegedly pepper sprayed while on North Vancouver’s Hyannis trail Friday morning.

According to Marg Lesage, who owns and operates DogZen, the incident occurred while one of her walkers was out with a pack of six dogs off-leash, when the canines rounded a corner and startled a woman running.

“I guess we spooked her, she spooked us, and the dogs barked at her. She immediately went into hysterics, screaming and jumping all over the place,” Lesage told CityNews.

Lesage claims the walker told the woman to calm down, which in-turn, would help the dogs settle.

“But, she continued to scream and shout, and started throwing pretty ignorant and verbal abusive comments at my walker, and then pulled out her pepper spray … sprayed three of our dogs and threatened to spray [the walker] as well.”

The situation escalating further when Lesage says the woman followed her walker out of the trail, threatening to beat them up.

“When you’re so far up the mountain you don’t have cell range, so you can’t just pick up the phone and call somebody.”

“The three dogs along with the walker all got out of the trail safely and ended up being mostly okay,” said Lesage.

“[The walker] is totally fine, she was more worried about the dogs. One of the dogs definitely [got sprayed] more than the other two, and was in my care when he came back. I hosed him off, washed his eyes out.”

North Vancouver RCMP say they are aware of the situation and are working to identify the other party involved.

“So far there’s no CCTV or images of the other party … if anybody knows the other party involved, we’re asking them to come forward and speak to us. To provide their versions of the events,” Cst. Mansoor Sahak said.

“We don’t know what was going through this other person’s mind. We don’t know what their intentions were.”

Conflicts like this are becoming more common

Lesage says conflicts like the one she claims happened Friday are happening more often, and she thinks it’s due to people not realizing dog walkers are allowed to be on certain trails with dogs off-leash.

“It’s been getting a little ridiculous.”

“We pay the district of North Vancouver and West Vancouver to use these trails … and they are designated trails for dog walkers.”

Lesage says the district should place more signage on pathways to make people aware the trails are used for dogs.

“Letting the public know that if you come this trail, it’s a commercial dog-walking trail. You are going to come across dog-walkers with six dogs, and chances are most of them will be off-leash if they’re well behaved.”