Giselle's Story

Giselle had spunk. She was a typical, healthy 5-month-old dog, energetic, and everything you would expect from a dog her age. One of my co-workers, a roommate of Giselle's owner, told me she was the "best and sweetest dog-ever".

Giselle's owner, who is also a co-worker of mine, had just adopted Giselle, a yellow lab, from a local animal shelter a couple months ago. Her friend and roommate had just got a bassett hound pup, and she wanted to get a dog herself. She talked about Giselle constantly, and loved this dog completely.

On September 25th, around noon, her roommate was planning to walk her bassett hound, Elliot. Giselle quickly escaped out of the open doorway, and took off.

Giselle's owner, her boyfriend, and roommate looked for Giselle as much as they could, to no avail. They thought she wouldn't be back. Talking to her roommate at work the same day, she suddenly recalled that Giselle had one of those chips that they sometimes put in animals in case of an incident such as this. It sounded promising that Giselle would be found.

Later that night, around 10:30 pm, Giselle's owner and her boyfriend would find her. They found her in a wash about a couple blocks away from their house, in a wash near Stone and Roger Road. (For those who don't know what a "wash" is--it's a dry river bed).

Giselle was unconscious. She was extremely hot. They rushed her to an animal hospital, where Giselle was treated.

This is where it gets really disturbing. When Giselle was found, she smelled of alcohol, one of her eyes were swollen shut, and she had an open sore near her neck. She was urinating blood. It appeared that whoever Giselle came in contact with that day, had beaten her badly. The injuries were not consistent with being hit by a car. The vet told Giselle's owner that she had suffered blunt force trauma and that her brain would not likely recover. She would have brain damage, but would live.

Five days later, Giselle died.

When you really think about it, Giselle's story really tells a lot about our society. The fine line between abusing animals and killing humans is too common to ignore. If you look into the history of serial killers, you will find a large majority had abused animals before moving on to killing people.

When will the person or persons that abused and tortured Giselle move on to humans?