SAN FRANCISCO (KRON) — A golden miniature dachshund puppy died on her first day at a San Francisco dog training school.
The cute 9-week-old puppy, named Olive, weighed just four pounds. “She immediately became my best friend and my world,” Olive’s owner, Chloe Skelly, told KRON4.
Skelly said she chose Prime Paw in the Mission District as Olive’s training school because it had received “rave reviews.” Prime Paw employees, according to Skelly, reassured her that the mini dachshund would be monitored and kept away from larger puppies at all times.
Skelly dropped Olive off at Prime Paw on May 30. Less than three hours later, she received an urgent phone call from the dog school.
“I received a call from a Prime Paw employee that there was an accident with another puppy and I needed to come to the SPCA hospital. They wouldn’t tell me what happened. When I arrived at the SPCA, a Prime Paw employee told me Olive … had been playing with a nearly 20-25 (pound) bernedoodle puppy, unsupervised,” Skelly told KRON4.
An employee said, “We don’t know what happened. We didn’t see it,” according to Skelly.
An after-death report concluded that Olive died from a collapsed lung caused by blunt force trauma, Skelly said, “a presumably direct correlation to being hit by this other, much larger dog.”
Olive’s grieving owner posted photographs of her tiny puppy on Instagram and warned other dog owners about her experience. “I am heartbroken her little life was cut so short, and so negligently. It’s unfair,” she wrote.
According to Prime Paw, the May 30 incident began when an employee in charge of monitoring Olive heard her “yelp.” The employee immediately isolated Olive from the other dogs and noticed that the dachshund was “acting irregularly and showing signs of lethargy. Following that, the employee immediately rushed Olive to a veterinarian, but she had already passed away,” Prime Paw wrote in a statement.
Prime Paw claims it does not know what happened to Olive that made her yelp, and the vet was unable to identify a specific cause of death.
Prime Paw Owner James Baybayan told KRON4, “We are heartbroken by the tragic death of a puppy named Olive. Veterinarians found that Olive had a pneumothorax — a collapsed lung — but that there were no signs of any trauma. Based on the determination by the veterinarians who received Olive, there is no identifiable reason for her death.”
The company’s website describes the dog school on Alabama Street as a “bustling dog training center and day school in San Francisco that provides positive-scientific based education.”
Over its nine-year history, the dog school has cared for thousands of dogs. A fatality has never happened before the May 30 incident, according to the company.
Baybayan said, “We pride ourselves on providing a safe, welcoming and secure environment for the dogs under our care, and Olive was given that as well. We have a rigorous screening and monitoring process to ensure those standards are met and those protocols were in place at the time of this incident. I have dedicated my life’s work to training, supporting and caring for dogs. This is my one true passion. Our deepest sympathies and heartfelt condolences are with Olive’s owner.”
Skelly said she believes negligence at Prime Paw led to Olive’s death.
Skelly told KRON4, “She was my first ever puppy who should have had many more years with me. I only had 10 days.”
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