Dog Sitter Dragged, Abused 3 Pets While Their Owner Was On Vacation

A woman from Portland, Connecticut, had to cut her vacation short and return home after she saw live CCTV footage of the dog sitter abusing her pets.

Cindy Gruss hired a dog sitter to look after her three pets while she went on a vacation. However, she was shocked when the saw the woman dragging and pulling the animals while she was away. She immediately cut short the trip and returned home.

Speaking to CBS-affiliated television station WFSB on Monday, Gruss said she was shaken when she saw the dog sitter abusing Maggie, a dog she owned for three years.

“I saw the video of Maggie first and I just shook in my skin. I started crying,” she said.

Gruss has been fostering the other two dogs named Chief and Eagle for a few months now. She said the two canines were abused in the past and that she was retraining them.

There were several other footage that showed the dog sitter abusing the animals. While one showed her dragging Chief from the backyard, the other showed her spraying water from the backyard hose on all the three canines.

“Watching them live from far away and not being able to do anything,” Gruss said, adding that the behavior of all the dogs has changed post the incident. “Not listening, not coming to be like she always does, the happy-go-lucky girl she is. More cautious, more maternal and protective of two of them,” Gruss said.

The exact date of the incident was not known and there was no information if any case was filed against the dog sitter.

In a similar incident in March, a man was caught on camera choking and throwing a dog he was supposed to train. Victor Suero took his neighbor’s dog, a 1-year-old Siberian husky named Winter, out for a walk as part of training along with his own dog, Han. He then “became upset with Winter” and choked the canine before slamming it to the ground, all of which was captured on CCTV. He was arrested and charged with two counts of “animal cruelty with the intent to injure or kill.”