Pet owners got a sad awakening to keep their dogs contained near busy roadways last week but the incident has some questioning the company's policies. On Sept. 27, a dog strayed from its owners and was hit and killed by a Southland Transportation bus driving through Heritage Hills and dropping off children from school. Jonathan Weal, regional director of Southland Buses, said the dog “bolted” into the street and ended up between the front and back wheels of the moving bus. “Basically, the school bus driver was driving down the street, below the speed limit,” said Weal. “The dog was at large, it was running around the street – it was actually on the opposite side of the street of its home.” Weal said the dog was crushed by the back wheels after it went under the bus. The driver immediately called it in he added but also had a responsibility to leave the scene quickly as there were still children on the bus. “It’s obviously incredibly distressing for the students – these were young children on the bus. So the idea is, you get the children out of the area as soon as possible to cause the minimum amount of stress to the children,” Weal said. “Our driver was distraught, she’s a dog owner herself. I’ve got four dogs myself, I know how I would feel. It’s a horrible thing to have happened. But the first thing that we have to do is make sure the students are safe and cause the least amount of trauma to the students.” Cochrane RCMP confirmed that a concerned witness, Raymond Bosma, reported it to the detachment. “It looks like it was an accident, nothing criminal, including not being a hit and run,” said Cst. Kary Moore of the Cochrane RCMP. Bosma, who was doing work on the pet owner’s basement, disagrees. He said the owners opened their front door to let someone in and then the dog bolted out the front door. Bosma said he thinks Southland’s policy to drive away from the scene without stopping is unacceptable. “She just kept driving,” Bosma said, expressing concern that an accident like this should have been better acknowledged at that moment. “I was pretty sickened,” he said. Moore said that Southland is also filing a report and it will be further investigated.
