Article content continued

The perpetrator in that 2011 case pleaded guilty and was sent to jail for six months, which was considered to be among the longest sentences handed out for animal abuse in Canada at the time. This week, however, an Amherstburg, Ont., man plead guilty to a similar charge, though instead of spending six months behind bars, he will be there for the next 24.

We apologize, but this video has failed to load.

tap here to see other videos from our team. Try refreshing your browser, or

Thirty-two-year-old Michael Hill plead guilty Monday to causing unnecessary suffering to an animal, for which he was sentenced to two years in a federal penitentiary, plus three years probation and a 25-year ban on owning a pet. Hill was not actually the owner of the dog he abused, but rather, he was tasked by its owners to surrender the dog to the humane society after they discovered their newborn daughter was allergic. Instead of dropping the dog off, however, Hill chose to bind the dog’s muzzle, neck and paws with electrical tape and dump him by the side of the road. (Luckily, the dog was spotted, taken into surgery, and survived.)

I read about this case after my attempted five-year-animal-abuse-news hiatus only because my journalist-droid side needed to take precedence over my self-imposed isolation: It was a topic for National Post comment editor Matt Gurney’s radio show panel, of which I am occasionally a participant. And talking about it, even in those brief five minutes, reminded me of why I had my shield up in the first place: though I read and write about murders, assaults, abuses and wars every day, this one — about a 13-pound dog in a town I had never heard of — managed to get to me. The effect is a red-hot, back-of-the-neck type fury that can turn a dove into a hawk, and compel someone whose job it is to read the news to start flipping past certain headlines.