Court finds man not justified in killing Bear the Chihuahua in Boston Bar, B.C.

A British Columbia provincial court judge says a Boston Bar man who shot a tea-cup Chihuahua named Bear claiming it was menacing his chickens was not justified in killing the animal.

The court said in a ruling published online that Behrouz Rahmani Far had been in a bitter, years-long feud with the dog’s owner, his neighbour Glenn Kurack.

The ruling says the pair had made numerous complaints to police about each other over the years, and part of their dispute “centred” on Kurack’s dogs.

The ruling says Rahmani Far kept about 60 chickens on his property, and the tiny dog had roamed on his property several times leading up to March 3, 2022, when Far used a .22 calibre rifle to shoot the male dog in the head.

The ruling says Rahmani Far called police and reported that he shot the dog to “bring peace” to his life, and believed that B.C.’s Livestock Act allowed him to kill the animal because it was “threatening his chickens.”

The court found the law doesn’t apply to chickens, and that Bear wasn’t an “imminent risk,” as it convicted Rahmani Far of killing or injuring an animal over what Judge Peter Whyte said was the man’s ongoing anger at his neighbour and frustration with RCMP who he said weren’t fixing the problem.

“He had simply had enough, and determined that he would resolve the matter by taking it into his own hands,” Judge Whyte’s ruling says.