Who's Been Killing San Francisco Dogs With Poisoned Meatballs?

If you live in San Francisco, be warned: meatballs left out on the street are not safe for your dog. While keeping your animal away from food left out by strangers is never a bad idea, someone has been terrorizing San Francisco’s dog-friendly neighborhoods for years, making the area’s residents particularly fearful for their furry friends. It seems he or she is back.

Peter Brown, a Senior Reviews Editor at video game website Gamespot, who lives near Duboce Park in San Francisco, cautioned his followers to avoid any meatballs or food on the ground after seeing a post about it in a private neighborhood Facebook group, and it took off after that.

People quickly noticed that there was a pattern here too — the dog-murderer was active during the summer last year, and then stopped. Tests showed the meat was laced with strychnine. They’ve also left out the deadly food for dogs in several previous years. In 2014, one dog died in the Twin Peaks neighborhood, a 7-year-old dachshund named Oskar. His 72-year-old owner Dorothy Schechter saw him snap up something that looked like a rock on the ground, and the pup started seizing an hour later. Eight days later he was dead, reported Time magazine.

According to Brown, the meatballs have also been an issue in other SF neighborhoods.

Social media’s responses were, unsurprisingly, merciless. Some even suggested the killer meet a Ramsay Bolton death by hounds.

And it’s not a new, or even localized phenomenon.

In fact, poisoned meatballs have shown up in other countries as well, often attributed to Islamic immigrants, as some sects of Islam consider dogs to be impure. However, these rumors are often unsubstantiated and only contribute to Islamophobia, so we won’t link any here. There is, as yet, no information about the dog-murderer or murderers in San Francisco.

As Brown said, watch out for suspicious meat and “keep the puppers safe.”