Jimi spared

The dog accused of killing another dog at an off-leash city park must remain leashed and muzzled at all times, but will not be put down.

The charges against the owner of a dog named Jimi followed a fatal incident at a city-run dog park on Winnipeg Avenue in November of 2010. The dog Jimi, which many accused of being a pitbull, allegedly attacked a chihuahua named Gus.

The chihuahua later died, which eventually led to charges against Jimi’s owner.

But on Tuesday the City of Thunder Bay dropped two key statements in the case against the dog’s owner. The first statement surrounded the accusations that the dog was a pitbull, a breed that must be leashed and muzzled at all time by provincial law. The other dealt with an accusation that Jimi had bit both the smaller dog, Gus, and a person at the dog park.

“As the result of a pre-trial discussion, the City of Thunder Bay deleted the pitbull designation,” said the lawyer representing Jimi’s owners, Mary Bird of Bird and Thatcher law offices. “(The City of Thunder Bay also) deleted the allegations that he bit a person.”
The city removed the pitbull designation due to a lack of evidence that the dog was a pitbull.

Once those two statements were removed, the owner agreed to keep Jimi under a control order.

That control order requires the dog to be leashed and muzzled at all time. The order also bans Jimi from attending any of the city’s dog parks.

“They agreed to (the control order) primarily for the protection of Jimi, so that those types of accusations can’t be made,” Bird said.

The incident at the dog park, as well as the allegations and criminal charges that followed it, became a contentious issue for many in late 2010 and early 2011.

The issue led to a protest on the steps of city hall calling for the charges against the dog’s owner to be dropped. It also led to the creation of a Facebook group that supported the same cause.

While the criminal charges against the dog’s owner have been resolved, a civil suit that stems from the same incident is still ongoing.