A British Columbia provincial court judge has ruled that 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.
“By all accounts, the two do not get along,” Judge Peter Whyte said last month in Chilliwack provincial court.
Kurack, the ruling said, was under a court order not to have any contact with Rahmani Far after being convicted of assault at the time of the trial.
The ruling said the pair had made numerous complaints to police about each other over the years, and part of their dispute “centred” on Kurack’s dogs.
Rahmani Far keeps about 60 chickens, and the tiny dog had roamed onto the man’s 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 said.
The ruling says Rahmani Far called the 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.”
“He initially said he did not kill Bear to protect his chickens, but rather to protect his family,” the ruling says. “He said he regretted having to take such a drastic measure but felt he had no other choice.”
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.
Frustration with police
Whyte said the man shot Bear not because of the danger to his family or chickens but rather his ongoing anger at his neighbour and frustration with police, 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,” Whyte’s ruling said. “He told the RCMP that if a dog came back on his property, he would shoot it. He expressed frustration at what he perceived was inaction on the part of the RCMP to deal with his concern about the dogs.”
Whyte’s ruling said Rahmani Far didn’t attempt to “scare or shoo the dog away” when he found it on his property the day of the shooting.
“This was because, at the time he retrieved his rifle, he had made a final decision to deal with the issue once and for all,” Whyte said. “In his own words, he had ‘had enough.'”
Disputes over parking, electrical work
Kurack said in an interview on Tuesday that his relationship with his neighbour soured quickly after they began living next to each other years ago, with troubles over parking access and a dispute over payment for electrical work that he had done for Rahmani Far.
He said he adopted Bear and another Chihuahua after his ex-wife died, and she had paid about $6,000 for the breeding pair.
Kurack said he bought his property at an “awesome time,” when prices were more affordable, and the feud with his neighbour has friends and family encouraging him to move away.
“Everybody thinks I should just sell my place and move. I own my own house. My house is the only house in town that’s solar-powered,” he said. “I can’t move anywhere else that’s cheaper than where I am.”
Rahmani Far’s defence lawyer did not respond to a request for comment on the case, and the Boston Bar RCMP detachment did not return a call for comment about the ongoing feud.