Eureka Springs City Council member Harry Meyer shot and killed his dog in front of his home on Cross Street as a neighbor watched in November 2024, using a bullet borrowed from the city’s animal control officer.
Meyer said the dog, a dachshund mix named Daisy, was suffering from cancer.
“My dog was down, had cancer, couldn’t move,” Meyer said Tuesday, March 25. “It was on a Sunday. It was shaking and I couldn’t touch it without it whining, so I put it out of its misery.”
Virginia Seymour, who lives across the street from Meyer, said she witnessed the shooting.
“I was in my front yard, working in my yard, and I didn’t see the dog at first because his grass was tall,” Seymour said Tuesday, March 25. “And I noticed he kept coming out and I looked over there. I said: ‘What’s going on?’
“ ‘Oh, she’s not doing well, you know, blah, blah, blah,’ ”Seymour said. “… This is going on for a little while, and then he was going downstairs and digging a hole. I thought he was going to take her to be put down, then go ahead (and bury her). And then I’m working around and I see him come outside with a gun in his hand. And it’s not a handgun, it was a — I don’t know if that’s a shotgun or whatever, because I wasn’t trying to stare.
“I said: ‘Harry, what are you doing?’ And he goes: ‘Well, I don’t want her to be in misery.’ And I’m going: ‘OK, I’m not going to watch this,’ but I couldn’t help it. I said: ‘He’s really going to do this.’
“And he just,” Seymour said, indicating that Meyer aimed the gun, “… and ‘pop.’ And I said: ‘I cannot believe you did that.’ And the reason why it stuck in my brain is because she was still wagging her tail when he shot her. So she still loved him. This is his furry baby that you’ve had for years and years and years. Why don’t you take the time to take the thing to be put down and not shoot it? And then he was dragging it to the gate before he picked her up, finally carried her downstairs to put her in the ground.” Seymour said Meyer dragged the dog by her front legs to the gate.
Meyer said he was distraught after the incident.
“I hated it,” he said. “I bawled after I put my dog down, OK?”
Meyer said he had adopted the dog from a shelter six years earlier.
Asked if he could have taken the dog to a veterinarian to be euthanized, Meyer replied: “On a Sunday? Do you not understand? I couldn’t pick it up, it was hurting so bad. This was a mercy thing. I’ve had four dogs put down since I’ve been here. Every one of them went to the vet to get put down, but this one here was in such bad shape that I had to put her down by myself. No apologies. I don’t know why it should even get in the newspaper, but if you think it’s newsworthy, you go right ahead and print it. I don’t understand.”
Meyer also was asked if he could have taken the dog out of Seymour’s view before firing the fatal shot.
“The neighbor wouldn’t go in her house,” he said. “She sits there and watches me all day. Remember Mrs. Kravitz in ‘Bewitched?’ That’s what I’ve got there.”
CALL TO POLICE
Another neighbor, Jim Marple, who owns property on both sides of Meyer’s home, called the Eureka Springs Police Department after the shooting. The Times-Echo obtained a copy of an audio recording of that call.
Marple described the incident and asked if what had happened was legal.
“I’m not sure,” the unidentified dispatcher replied. “I mean it depends on the situation, I think, but …” “He just shot his dog,” Marple replied. “He said he couldn’t afford the vet bills. He just shot it right in the front yard in front of people.”
At that point, the dispatcher said he would contact animal control. An audio recording of that call also was obtained by the Times-Echo.
“Hey, Jimmy,” the dispatcher said. “I’ve got somebody that’s got a question for you. … He wants to know if it’s legal for his neighbor to shoot his dog in his front yard.”
“Huh?” animal control officer Jimmy Evans replied.
“Neighbor didn’t shoot his dog; neighbor shot his own dog,” the dispatcher said. “He wants to know if that was legal, because he says the neighbor said he couldn’t afford the vet bills.”
“Really?” Evans replied. “Well, I think it’s legal for him to shoot it, but I don’t think if it’s in the city limits …” “Yeah,” the dispatcher said. “It was on Cross Street, so it’s over off of East Mountain, so it is in city limits. The person was like: ‘Well, it is illegal to shoot a gun in the city limits.’ ” “Oh, you’re talking about Harry Meyer’s,” Evans replied.
“Probably,” the dispatcher said. “He wasn’t the one that called.”
“Yeah, his dog is dying,” Evans said.
Evans took Marple’s name and telephone number and said he would call him.
The Times-Echo obtained copies of two Eureka Springs Police Department reports in connection with the incident. The first indicates that a unit was dispatched on Thursday, Nov. 21, and the second indicates that an officer arrived on scene at 11:19 a.m. the following day, Friday, Nov. 22. According to that report, the unit was “cleared” four minutes and 45 seconds after arriving on scene and the report was closed four seconds later.
Police chief Billy Floyd said he was at training on the day of the incident.
“I told them: ‘Well, just hold off going and talking to him until I get the details,’ and I kind of postponed it a little bit,” Floyd said. “So when I got back in and got the details, I decided to go talk to him myself. And, of course, he apologized. … He explained that moving his dog actually caused him pain. He didn’t even want to put it in the car to haul it to the vet or to haul it out of town. And so he dispatched it right there at his house. Of course, bad idea, against the law.”
Discharging a firearm inside Eureka Springs city limits is prohibited by a city ordinance. Floyd said he and other officers have the authority to exercise discretion in considering whether to issue citations for violations of city ordinances.
“I talked to him about it,” Floyd said. “He said he was sorry and that was pretty much the end of it.”
Meyer told the Times-Echo that he didn’t think about the fact that firing a gun inside city limits is prohibited.
“I didn’t even consider it,” he said. “I didn’t consider it.”
Floyd said he does not believe Meyer’s actions constituted animal cruelty.
“I believe the animal control officer had talked to the neighbors because they were complaining for animal cruelty and the animal control officer explained to them that it wasn’t animal cruelty,” Floyd said. “He wasn’t shooting him out of anger or to make him suffer. He was shooting him to end the suffering.”
Floyd said his conversation with Meyer was not recorded, as the chief does not wear a body camera. He said he left the conversation with “a good feeling.”
Floyd said that Meyer said he had forgotten that it was against the law to fire a gun inside the city limits.
“When I addressed him, he was, first of all, distraught about the dog and then apologetic about the misuse of the firearm,” Floyd said. “… It wasn’t the reckless discharge that they were complaining about. It wasn’t even the noise that they were complaining; it was the animal cruelty. I think I pretty much let the animal control guy take care of that end of it.”
Animal control officer provided bullets
Both Floyd and Meyer confirmed that Evans gave Meyer bullets in order to kill the dog.
“He didn’t have any bullets for his gun,” Floyd said. “So, yeah, he borrowed a handful of .22 bullets from the animal control guy.”
Meyer said he asked Evans to shoot the dog.
“You know, I didn’t have the heart to do it,” Meyer said. “So, Jimmy’s a friend of mine. I asked him to come over and if he would do it for me. And he said: ‘Look, I’ve gotten so soft-hearted, the last dog I had to put down, I took it to the vet.’ I didn’t even have any .22 shells. I’ve got an old single-shot .22 rifle that was my father’s. Jimmy gave me a couple of .22 shells and left. And the woman across the street would not go in her house, would not leave me alone, and she called the police. So that’s that.”
‘Cuss, cuss, cuss’
Seymour said Meyer confronted her and accused her of calling the animal control officer after the shooting.
“He’s blaming me for calling in animal control, but it wasn’t me,” she said. “So one day I was coming out and he’s just blowing leaves. He got them off his roof and he blew ‘em all over here. I said: ‘Harry, what are you doing?’
“ ‘Cuss, cuss, cuss,’ ” Seymour said Meyer replied. “You know: ‘Leave me the f*** alone, cuss, cuss, cuss.’ ” Seymour said Meyer then “comes stomping over to my yard” and asked if Seymour had contacted animal control after he shot the dog.
“And I said: ‘And if I did?’ ” Seymour said. “That’s why he thinks I did it, but I didn’t.”
Marple said that Meyer’s daughter, Ida, went to Seymour’s house later and apologized for her father’s behavior. Ida Meyer is the city clerk treasurer.
“About a day later, Harry’s daughter went over to Virginia’s house and I was there when the daughter was there,” Marple said. “I heard this. The daughter apologized to Virginia about her father. The daughter said: ‘Yeah, he’s got a problem with overreacting, getting mad about the least little thing,’ or something like that.”
Ida Meyer declined to comment on Wednesday, March 26.
Harry Meyer, 75, has served on the city council for more than six years after first being elected in 2018.
