Dr. Meredith Bird wants the other side of Edgar Goulet’s story heard. She has treated his pets for years and describes him as an animal lover who was forced to protect himself and his neighbor’s children against his vicious pit bull by shooting the dog.

The Providence Journal / Gretchen Ertl

NORTH KINGSTOWN — Dr. Meredith Bird can’t reconcile the Edgar Goulet convicted Monday of maliciously shooting his pit bull to death with the man who bottle-fed his pups and for years tenderly cared for a dog with Addison’s disease.

She was so distressed by a news story about his conviction that she sprang to his defense, saying she is convinced he wouldn’t have taken such drastic action unless the dog posed a threat to him and his neighbors.

“I suspect if the dog mauled someone or was just about to, he’d be a hero,” Bird, a veterinarian, said yesterday in her clinic on Shermantown Road.

Special Assistant Attorney General Mark Trovato responded that Bird “didn’t see the whole picture.”

After a four-day trial, a Washington County Superior Court jury Monday found Goulet, 60, of South Kingstown, guilty of maliciously killing his three-year-old dog, Sparky, and possessing a sawed-off shotgun. Judge Stephen P. Nugent ordered him held without bail at the Adult Correctional Institutions in Cranston until his sentencing July 14.

Goulet shot Sparky in the head in May 2006 after the dog ran away, and then buried the carcass in his backyard, on Nautilus Drive East. In addition to the .22-caliber rifle the police say Goulet used to shoot the dog, officers found a 102-year-old sawed-off shotgun tucked, unloaded, into his couch, and rounds of ammunition inside his house.

But Bird, who has treated Goulet’s animals over the past decade, says there’s a more complex picture at play. Sparky’s chart was labeled “caution” because the dog was known to growl and snap, she says, though Goulet could handle him.

“We were scared of Sparky,” said Bird, who testified on Goulet’s behalf at the trial. “We were cautious of him.”

He had showed her gashes on his hand he said came from Sparky, she said. “It’s not a lack of sensitivity about what happened,” she said, “but I have a real question about what other people would do in that situation.”

Trovato, who prosecuted the case, said yesterday that no one could link those marks to the dog at the trial.

BIRD SAID she abhors guns, but that shooting an animal is identified as a humane euthanasia method by the American Veterinary Medical Association, and the state Department of Environmental Management is called to shoot injured and rabid wildlife.

“Did that dog suffer? I wasn’t there,” said Bird, owner of Veterinary Services of Wickford and a wildlife rehabilitator. “It could have been very quick. Sparky was going to have to be put to sleep anyway.”

In her view, Goulet was an attentive dog owner who took great care of China, a female pit bull with Addison’s disease, a disorder in which the adrenal glands do not produce enough of the hormone cortisol.

She admits she doesn’t agree with all of Goulet’s decisions, particularly allowing his female dogs to have puppies when he had limited income as a disabled veteran of the Vietnam War. But she notes that he had previously brought a sick dog to her to be euthanized.

“I think he always did right by his dogs,” Bird says. “The dogs shouldn’t have had puppies, but that’s not illegal.”

THE POLICE SEIZED three adult dogs — China, Laverne and Shirley — and five puppies from Goulet’s property when he was arrested. The dogs, minus one puppy that was stolen from the pound, were returned to him weeks later.

“There wasn’t proof the girls were being abused,” AnnMarie Biegner, pound manager, said yesterday.

Bird was a Navy nurse during the Vietnam War, and her eyes fill with tears when she speaks of Goulet’s military service and struggles with posttraumatic stress disorder.

“When I heard about this it really got to me,” Bird says. “He’s a vet; he’s a disabled vet.”

She adds a second later: “We did teach him to use a gun.”

IT’S GOULET’S appreciation for guns that concerns the state, said Michael J. Healey, spokesman for the attorney general. The state asked that he be held without bail after his conviction because of the number of guns and amount of ammunition he surrendered to police after his arrest — a loaded 22-caliber rifle and a loaded Winchester, in addition to the unloaded sawed-off shotgun — and because knowing he would be facing jail time at his sentencing in July made him a flight risk. In addition, he had lived with his girlfriend in Connecticut while he was awaiting trial, not at home, where he was supposed to be.

The guns are “not illegal, but they’re not safe,” Healey said. “What if something crazy happened and he accidentally shot a kid in the neighborhood?”

Goulet previously had a clean record, according to police, although a protective order in 1994 barred him from contacting his ex-wife in Vermont.

Trovato said the behavior Bird saw at her office was to be expected. Would a patient eat an Oreo while awaiting a dentist appointment? he asked. “Of course, he’s going to be on his best behavior.”

Bird also had a relationship with Goulet that went beyond veterinarian and customer, Trovato said; the two bartered, exchanging cabinetry work for veterinary services.

“If she’s upset, she didn’t see the whole picture,” he said.

Goulet kept the dogs outside continually and killed Sparky out of frustration, he said.

Prosecutors had to fight pit bulls’ reputation as an aggressive breed to make their case, Trovato said. “In this case, it was not a vicious dog.”

Goulet faces up to two years in prison for the malicious-killing count, and up to 10 years in prison for the weapons charge, but whether Goulet will be allowed to have dogs after his term is served worries Bird, too. It’s in his animals, she said, that he finds his solace.

kmulvane@projo.com