I don't know if they were vicous? They were pit bulls!

Farmer shoots pesky dogs
By MARK BONOKOSKI
Toronto Sun

PORT PERRY -- It is, indeed, a tangled web, spun from a mixture of small town fact and rumour, its storyline replete with the prerequisite twists and turns, and its complicated plot supported by a cast of characters that need no Hollywood scriptwriter to bring them to life.

There is Katie Barker, age 21, who bartends at the local Duke of Durham, a pub owned by her parents, Wayne and Monica Barker. She had three pit bulls, one she owned, and the other two she was about to adopt.

NEIGHBOUR'S DOGS

Those two dogs belonged to her neighbour, Craig Godman, age 31, who lived beside her and her boyfriend, separated by an adjoining wall in an old farmhouse-cum-duplex situated outside of town on Harper Rd.

All three dogs are now dead and buried in a manure pile

Indeed, the plot thickens.

William Cohoon is the landlord who owns the old farmhouse. He is a retired doctor, a surgeon by trade, as well as one of the coroners for the region.

He is also a farmer who raises beef cattle and chickens on a spread that backs on to that old farmhouse.
Longhaired, and with thick sideburns, the 67-year-old physician, respected for his years of medical practice as well as his success in recruiting new doctors to the area, was described by one local as looking like "someone who went to Woodstock back in '69 and never left."

NOT FAR FROM TRUTH

It is a description of Cohoon that is not far from the truth -- he declined to have his picture taken.
Dr. Cohoon is also the landlord who shot those three dogs one day when Katie Barker was away from home, and then buried them in the manure pile behind one of his barns -- all which goes a long way to explaining the posters that once adorned a number of telephone poles here.

"Doctor Cohoon is a pet killer," they read.

This is not to say, however, that Dr. Cohoon makes any bones about what he did.

Because he doesn't.

"The dogs were out running my cattle, and on more than one occasion," he explains.

"I advised the kid that if she didn't keep her dogs locked up or chained that they would have to answer to what they were doing.

"They were shot with good reason."

Sgt. Al Brouwer was the duty officer in charge of Durham Regional Police's Port Perry detachment on the day he was asked about the shooting of three dogs, and whether all was on the up and up, and that's exclusive of the newish legislation that demands all pit bulls in Ontario be leashed and muzzled when outside their domicile.

"Dr. Cohoon is a farmer here, and he has every right to protect his livestock from those dogs or any dog. As far as we're concerned, he did no wrong," says Brouwer, indicating that the gun the doctor used was also properly registered.

He suggests, however, that there is perhaps more to that Harper Rd. farmhouse than meets the eye.

"Check your own newspaper," he says.

There wasn't much in the Sun about the drug bust that went down two weeks before three pit bulls met their end, but the local Scugog Standard had the matter covered like a blanket.

It told of how Durham Regional's drug enforcement unit, supported by heavily armed members of the tactical support unit, as well as uniformed officers, took down the side of the old farmhouse where one Craig Godman lived -- he being the person who resided on the other side of the wall of the duplex where Katie Barker lived with her boyfriend -- and allege they found a marijuana grow-op with an estimated street value of $50,000.

That, and a loaded shotgun.

Pit bulls and grow-ops have all the optics of one plus one equalling two. But, in this case, the three pit bulls in the farmhouse's breezeway appear to have presented no problem to the police, which explains how Katie Barker came home to suddenly become the additional caregiver of her neighbour Craig Godman's two dogs -- he was in custody on drug and weapons charges, and three of his friends who were with him at the time of the bust were also facing an assortment of drug charges.

"I thought something might have been going on next door," she says.

"But it was none of my business."

The old farmhouse is vacant now. Katie Barker says Dr. Cohoon turned off the heat and water, forcing her and her boyfriend to move out.

Dr. Cohoon says not only was the rent in arrears, but that the place had been "trashed."

NOT RENTABLE

She said; he said, yes. But the farmhouse, judging by what could be seen through a window, did not appear imminently rentable on the day it was visited -- and that's includes either side of the duplex's separating wall.

"You want a story? Then look at landlord-tenant issues," Cohoon says. "There's no story in shooting three dogs."

William Cohoon says, quite matter of factly, that he has no idea whether the three pit bulls were vicious or not.

"They weren't to me," he says. "But they're pit bulls, aren't they? They're subject to change immediately.

"Sweet one minute, not the next."

'CLEANLY SHOT'

He put them down -- "cleanly shot and euthanized," he says -- not because they were vicious, but because they were chasing and endangering his livestock, a herd of 70 beef cattle with a value of about $1,100 per head.

"Like I said, I had warned the kid about those dogs," he says. "When she came home, I told her what I had done.

"But it is not as if they were shot without good reason.

"And, yes, they're in the manure pile," he admits.

"Composting," as he puts it.