Two pit bulls that got free and killed a cat in 2018 have been spared and can stay with their owner, albeit under strict conditions.

The owner was convicted of allowing the dogs to cause a hazard and failing to keep them safely tethered.

The St. John’s woman had taken them inside the fenced tennis courts on Stamp’s Lane, letting them off-leash while she answered a text. When she looked up again, the dogs were gone, having escaped through a gap in the fence. They were found after a frantic search but not before they’d attacked and killed a cat that lived nearby.

At the time, police returned the dogs to their owner without conditions—until the woman was convicted nine months later.

The Crown wanted the dogs turned over to the SPCA for adoption, but the judge ruled they could stay with their owner, largely based on testimony from an expert dog trainer.

The sentence included conditions that their owner does not get any more animals, and no one under 16 could live with them.

The judge also allowed one of the dogs to live with the owner’s daughter, something the Crown also opposed, insisting the SPCA has the expertise and experience to decide the dogs’ fate.

On appeal, Justice Donald Burrage bluntly disagreed, saying “it is the judge, not the SPCA, that decides the fate of nuisance animals.”