A Ladner woman should spend six to 12 months behind bars after she allowed six dogs to die in the back of her truck, Crown counsel suggested at a sentencing hearing Wednesday for former dog walker Emma Paulsen.
Crown counsel Jim MacAulay also asked Surrey provincial court Judge James Jardine to impose a fine of $5,000 to $10,000, a 10-year ban on owning any animals and a lifetime ban on caring for anyone else's animals, whether for pay or not.
Paulsen has pleaded guilty to two charges, one of public mischief, for making a false police report that the dogs had been stolen, and causing an animal to continue to be in distress under the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act.
MacAulay suggested three to six months in jail for each charge.
MacAulay laid out the facts of the case in the morning while several of the owners of the dead dogs watched from the gallery, sometimes in tears.
In the afternoon, Paulsen's lawyer, Eric Warren, asked for a conditional sentence that would be served in the community, adding the strong public attention the case has received has been a form of punishment.
He said a conditional sentence with strict terms would also send a strong message to the public.
However, he also asked the judge to consider an intermittent sentence if he is going to sentence her to any jail time. Intermittent sentences allow a person to serve their sentence on weekends or on their days off.
The defence told the court Paulsen was in a very bad emotional state and abusing alcohol at the time but had not been drinking that day.
"People don't do this lightly, they usually do it in an emotional state," he said.
Outside the courthouse, Amber Williams, the owner of one of the dogs, said she hopes Paulsen receives a jail sentence.
It was upsetting, but she said she was glad to hear more details about the circumstances of the case. "We still have not heard an apology from her yet," Williams said.
On May 13 of last year, Paulsen claimed she had driven the dogs from Delta to Langley to let them play at a dog park.
She would later tell police, reporters and privately
hired pet investigators that she had gone to the washroom for 10 to 15 minutes, and when she returned, the back canopy of her pickup was open and the dogs were missing.
She admitted less than a week later the entire tale was a fabrication.
On May 19, after already being confronted by the suspicious owner of Petsearchers Canada, she confessed again to two officers from the Langley RCMP.
The RCMP had become suspicious of her story after failing to find anyone who had seen Paulsen and the dogs at the park.
Paulsen had, in fact, picked up five large dogs, and along with her own, had put them in the back of the truck and apparently gone shopping for about 45 minutes, she later told investigators.
When she returned, the dogs were dead. She panicked, drove out to Abbotsford, and looked for
somewhere to dispose of them. She dumped them all in a ditch, without covering them.
"I was just trying to be fast, I guess so I didn't get caught," Paulsen said in her statement to police.
Meanwhile, she was already calling her clients, police and Langley Animal Protection Society to say the dogs had been stolen.
Saying the case is a complex one, Jardine reserved judgment until next Wednesday, Jan. 28.
