A 28-year-old domestic helper, Guyanti Wulandari, was sentenced to four weeks' jail for throwing her employer's 11-year old toy poodle dog from the third floor balcony of their home on May 13, 2020.

The Indonesian citizen is a work permit holder who worked as a domestic helper for the family.

Dog was euthanised "due to its critical condition"

According to court documents, Guyanti admitted that the dog, which was known as "Dou Dou", was thrown from the third floor balcony of the family's three-storey residence in Yio Chu Kang on May 13.

After being thrown off the balcony, Dou Dou was lying on the ground floor grass patch bleeding from its mouth at the front of the home.

The dog was immediately brought to the vet where it was found to have sustained multiple injuries.

On May 14, the dog was euthanised "due to its critical condition and to reduce its pain and suffering".

On May 15, the employers reported the case to the National Parks Board (NParks) as they suspected that Guyanti had thrown Dou Dou off from the third floor of the residence.

Helper was "under a lot of stress" when incident happened

Guyanti was employed as a domestic helper from December 2019 and her job scope included housework, cooking, and caring for the employer's two children and his pets, which included two birds and two dogs.

The helper shared that on May 13, the day of the incident, she was in a bedroom on the third level of the home to clean a bird cage and to feed the pet birds.

Guyanti added that she felt annoyed as the birds were noisy and that the 11-year-old poodle was continuously barking at her.

As Dou Dou's bark was annoying her, she opened the glass door of the bedroom, pick up the dog, walked out to the balcony and threw the dog off the third storey of the home.

After this happened, Guyanti ran downstairs to check on Dou Dou before informing her employer that the dog was bleeding from the mouth from the ground floor.

According to a postmortem examination performed by a vet on the dog, Dou Dou was found to have suffered "significant blunt-force injuries to the vertebral column and visceral organs likely resulting from an external traumatic incident".

During investigations, Guyanti explained that she was under a lot of stress at the time of the incident as her boyfriend had just ended their relationship.

In addition, the employer's father, who had helped with looking after the children and pets, had gone back to Hong Kong, which meant she had to manage more work on her own.

Giyanti was sentenced to four weeks' jail for committing an offence under the Animals and Birds Act.

For the act of causing the dog to be severely injured, which caused it to be euthanised, she could have been sentenced to a jail sentence of up to 18 months, fined up to S$15,000, or both.

Top images by niu niu/Unsplash and NParks