Victoria DeFilippis can’t forget the heart-sinking feeling that October day two years ago when she looked out onto her back yard and then saw a blue powder encrusting the face of one of her two dogs, then the other.
“I saw little blue crumbles all over (the yard) and I was like ‘What is this? That is so weird,’” DeFilippis said. “Then immediately the horror of what happened settled in.”
Jude and Rogue had both eaten an unknown amount of rat poison, mistakenly left out in a bucket by an employee of Sasquatch Pest Control in DeFilippis’ Forest Grove yard, according to a $9,000 lawsuit DeFilippis filed against the Beaverton company last week.
Rogue, a cane corso who was just 5-months-old at the time, survived. Jude, a mix of various breeds, didn’t. Despite DeFilippis’ efforts to nurse Jude back to health, the 11-year-old deteriorated over the next seven weeks, dying in December 2022, DeFilippis told The Oregonian/OregonLive.
“He went from being an extremely robust, active dog to, when he passed away, he was so weak I was carrying him like a baby,” DeFilippis said. “He had lost all motor function. I was bottle-feeding him, spoon-feeding him.”
A representative from Sasquatch Pest Control couldn’t be reached for comment. A representative from another pest control company responded to The Oregonian/OregonLive’s request for comment last week by saying it had acquired Sasquatch and didn’t own the company two years ago, nor did it have any knowledge about the poisoning.
DeFilippis’ lawsuit is seeking only economic damages because Oregon law views pets as property and doesn’t allow pet owners to seek damages for an animal’s pain and suffering, like it does for humans. In some instances, the law allows for pet owners to seek damages for their own emotional suffering, such as if a defendant intentionally set out to cause a pet owner distress, but that doesn’t apply in DeFilippis’ case, said her Portland animal law attorney, Geordie Duckler.
DeFilippis’ lawsuit alleges that the pest control company was careless, not malicious.
After she and her husband bought their home and noticed rats, DeFilippis said they hired the company to put the rat poison in secure boxes that were tied to the ground in areas of their property that her children and dogs didn’t have access to. On the evening she discovered her dogs had gotten into the bucket of poison, she said her husband jumped in the car with Jude and Rogue and rushed to the Tanasbourne Emergency Veterinary hospital, where their stomachs were pumped within about an hour.
The next day, DeFilippis said she got a text from one of the employees reading: “I believe I left a huge bucket of rodent bait in your backyard. I just realized it right now. Sorry. If it is out there, can you please bring it inside the garage.”
DeFilippis said after the poisoning, she immediately began cleaning and scrubbing her house because the dogs had been inside and she didn’t want her children, then ages 1 and 4, to come into contact with any of the poison the dogs had tracked in.
If there is one bright point to the story, she said, it’s that her dogs encountered the poison before her children got a chance to. Jude, she said, was always watching over them.
“That’s the one thing that gives me a little bit of peace — knowing that Jude did his duty until the end,” DeFilippis said.
She said she was gifted Jude for her 19th birthday when he was a 6-week-old puppy. Her husband and later her children grew to love him like another member of the family.
“Inseparable was the word I would use for him and my oldest,” DeFilippis said.
The loss, she added, “has had a profound effect on all of us.”
— Aimee Green covers breaking news and the justice system. Reach her at 503-294-5119, agreen@oregonian.com or @o_aimee.
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