A dog wandering in the middle of the street in a residential Collingwood neighbourhood Monday night was run over and shot by an OPP officer who believed it was a coyote.

The killing was captured on video by Sarah Leggett, a neighbour who posted it on Facebook.

Her grainy nighttime video shows the light-coloured dog walking slowly down her residential street at nighttime.

An Ontario Provincial Police (OPP) cruiser arrives and drives into the animal, then backs over it.

An officer then shoots the dog.

The dog’s name was Merrick and his owner, Karen Sutherland, still can’t believe anyone mistakenly believed he was a threat.

“I feel sick about the whole thing,” Sutherland told the Collingwood Connection. “I wish it wasn’t my dog.”

Merrick was 21-years-old and deaf, but otherwise healthy, Sutherland said. The dog was her constant companion, sticking by her side during her work as a gardener.

“I’ve had her my whole adult life,” said Sutherland. “She’s been through five or six relationships with me. People used to say, ‘Oh, my god, is she still alive?’ and I used to always joke that she was still alive to look after me.”

Sutherland couldn’t watch the full video footage of her dog’s death, it was too painful, she told the Collingwood Connection.

“She’s just the sweetest little animal,” said Sutherland. “I just feel so bad for my dog. After all this time I’ve had with her … to lose her like that.”

Sutherland said Merrick escaped her yard when a windstorm blew over a piece of the fence and wandered a couple blocks over to Seventh Street. Christine Soti, who lives on the block, spotted the dog walking on the road.

“It looked like it had been injured, because the front left leg, he was limping,” she said. Soti said the animal was just wandering, sniffing the ground.

“We’ve had 13 to 14 cats over the last month disappear,” she said. “And this dog looked just like a coyote.”

Soti called the OPP, who told her to call animal control. They, in turn, redirected her to call the OPP. Fed up, she forgot about it and decided to watch the election.

A little while later, Soti said the dog came after her neighbours, who were sitting on the porch, and acted aggressively. They called police and the OPP arrived around 10 p.m.

Soti said she saw the whole thing from “beginning to end.” The police officer pulled up, but couldn’t get out of his car because the dog was barking at his doors, she said.

So he ran it over, then got out and shot it, she said.

“It had no collar. What are you going to do when there’s been coyote sightings and things happening and the dog acting aggressively? What are you going to do?” she said.

“He had no choice, it was an awful thing, and he himself feels terrible about it,” she said.

OPP Acting Sgt. Lynda Cranney confirmed that the animal was a dog and that the owner had been notified.

She said it was too early to determine if it had rabies or any other disease. OPP say they’ve launched an investigation to find out what exactly happened.

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Police were responding to a complaint when a cruiser was dispatched to the neighbourhood, she said, adding there have been complaints of coyotes in the city.

The Star reported last November that there have been several reports of coyotes attacking pets in Burlington and Mississauga.

With files from Metroland Media reporter John Edwards