Swan Killed Pet Dog As Owner Watched In Horror

In a not-so-common incident, a pet dog was attacked and killed by a swan while the canine was having a swim in a duck pond at a park in Dublin on Saturday.

The cocker spaniel in question was off its leash at the time – as dogs were permitted to roam free post 11 a.m. local time (6 a.m. EDT) at Bushy Park in Terenure. A group of swans was swimming with their cygnets (young swans) in the same pond at the time. Suddenly, an adult swan broke free of the group and began attacking the dog.

A man who was feeding the ducks at the far end of the pond witnessed the dog owner screaming frantically at the swan which was attacking his pet and rushed over to help him.

“We started screaming at the swan, trying to distract it,” said the man, Irish Times reported. “The poor dog didn’t realize what was going on and swam straight for the swan.”

The man described the scene that unfolded in front of his eyes next. The swan lifted up its wings and started beating down on the canine “with one wing and then the other”. “That stunned the poor thing. Three or four more slaps and she [the dog] was gone,” the man said.

The owner was so stunned by the incident that he did not realize his cell phone had fallen into the pond during his frantic attempt to save his pet.

Peter Duignan, a Dublin city council park ranger, arrived at the scene with his two colleagues and retrieved the dog’s body from the water with the help of a small paddle boat and a net. “I have never heard of anything like this happening before,” said Duignan.

The man, who witnessed the incident, said that better precautionary measures should have been in place to prevent such a mishap. “They need to put up signs telling people to keep their dogs on leads around the pond. The swan was just protecting its cygnets.”

In the aftermath of the incident, bird experts assured the public that the incident was highly unusual and will only happen when swans perceive a threat to young cygnets.

“[Swans] are fiercely protective parents and they see a dog as a predator,” Niall Hatch of Birdwatch Ireland said. “It’s important that swans are given peace and quiet around the nesting season [which occurs during the summer months].”

In fact, he added, more often than not, it was always the other way around. He said his department had received multiple reports of swans being killed by dogs.