CASPER, Wyo. — A Natrona Country man pleaded guilty on Wednesday to a misdemeanor charge of cruelty to animals after a dog he boarded died from blunt force trauma and injuries including a fractured skull.
Nigel Michael Hageman, 25, will pay fines and restitution, according to a statement by District Attorney Dan Itzen by email.
A woman notified Metro Animal Services last March that she had boarded a golden doodle at Hageman’s Ochrona Midwest K9’s in Bar Nunn, and the dog ended up dead with a fractured skull under his care.
The business advertised boarding and training, with a specialty in managing aggressive dogs. The officer investigates in April, finding multiple kennels stacked on top of each other in a shop and some dogs too large for the kennels they were in, according to the officer making the report.
Metro officer Bionco Gomez learned that Hageman had taken the dog to Altitude Veterinary Hospital on the morning of March 10, 2025. He reportedly told the owner in a frantic call that he thought the dog may have gotten into a poison. The woman went to the clinic and was told the dog had been dead when it arrived, the report said. Hageman had already left.
Hageman told Officer Gomez the dog hadn’t shown any abnormal signs until the night before it died. He said he was the only one who cared for or handled the dog in the week that he had it. He told Gomez it was aggressive from time to time, and that it had snipped at him intermittently, according to the report.
He said that he took the dog out in the morning in the kennel, as he’d done before, and that it had moved halfway out of the cage over a 20-minute period, at which point it was barely breathing, so he rushed it to Altitude. He would later say the staff had asked him why he didn’t bring the dog in the night before.
The full report from the Wyoming State Veterinary Laboratory in April said that the dog’s cause of death was blunt force trauma to the head, leg and body, according to the affidavit. A lab doctor told the officer the injuries were consistent with the force of being hit by a car or dropped from a great height. The head injury was sustained within 24 hours of death, the lab said.
Hageman then underwent another interview, this time at the Casper Police Department. He said in one instance the dog had latched onto his hand and that the dog had struck its rear end on the kennel as he dislodged it. He also suggested that another dog could have caused the injury, though investigators assured him the lab had found no evidence supporting that theory.
Hageman reportedly stated that “it hurt his heart to know that it was me” and let a comment slip about the dog being dead the night before he took it in, according to the report.
A little over a week into the case, Officer Gomez went to Altitude to see the kennel that the dog had been brought in. “Officer Gomez observed the door was removed from the kennel, unknown why,” the report said.
Hageman told investigators during the investigation that he had shut down the boarding part of his business, and he preferred working with larger dogs and acting as a decoy for K-9 demos.
The dog’s owner told Oil City News she left the change-of-plea hearing without any further details from Hageman about what happened. She is owed $2,350 in restitution. She said that Hageman had refunded her what she paid for the three-week boarding and training.
Hageman was charged by the officer with felony cruelty to animals, and court documents reflect the hand-marked amendment from the officer’s recommended felony charge for the death of the animal to the misdemeanor charge.
“An out-of-town witness that was necessary to this case moved and was not able to be located,” Itzen said in his email to Oil City News. “With a guilty plea it will always follow the defendant as he moves forward.”
The Facebook profile for Ochrona Midwest K9 was deleted. It operated under Sunset K9 LLC, which is actively registered with the Secretary of State’s office.
CORRECTION: This article reflects that the investigation was conducted by Metro Animal Services and supported by an Casper Police Department detective.
