Nadia Persaud, seen here with two of her pets, is questioning a policy of shooting stray dogs in Saskatchewan's north. (Facebook)

A Winnipeg woman visiting a northern Saskatchewan community is questioning the practice of shooting dogs wearing identification collars, after her pets were killed.

"They had collars on them. They had name tags on them," Nadia Persaud told CBC News in an interview Wednesday. "No one phoned my cellphone saying they had my dogs."

Persaud said her three pets were neutered and well-cared for. She had rescued the dogs 10 months ago while she was teaching in Cole Bay, Sask.

She said that on Dec. 3, she was visiting friends in Buffalo Narrows with her dogs.

"We let the dogs out at nine in the morning, just for their morning ... business and they were in a fenced area," she said. "We noticed around 10 that they weren't in the fenced area any more."

Persaud said a search began right away throughout the town and surrounding area.

She said they toured the community every hour with no luck and, by the next day, she was concerned about the fate of the animals.

"Something is wrong, I don't know why I can't find them," she recalled thinking. Persaud checked with the local RCMP detachment and learned the community does not have a dog pound.

'We found them under garbage. They had bullet wounds on their head.'—Nadia Persaud

An officer told her that a dog catcher, however, was going around the community to shoot strays and that an announcement had been made on the local radio station, a message Persaud was not aware of.

Persaud said she was incredulous about the policy, but the officer told her the community has a problem with stray dogs. She was told dogs that had been shot were taken to the local landfill, and that was where she found her pets.

"We found them under garbage. They had bullet wounds on their head," she said. "One of the dogs had a bullet hole right between the eyes, so he was looking at the dog catcher."

A fourth dog was also in the garbage area.

Persaud said she later learned her dogs had been shot less than 24 hours after they went missing.

She took the animals' bodies to a crematorium, "the last bit we could do to honour our dogs."

The mayor of Buffalo Narrows said shooting strays is simply how animal control is done in the north.

Bobby Woods told CBC News Wednesday that community members had been complaining about roaming animals.

"We had a kid attacked and killed in Canoe Lake just down the road from us," Woods said. "There's kids in our community that got bit on the face by dogs."

Woods said the town is considering setting up a place to hold stray animals, so they do not have to be destroyed immediately after being caught.

Buffalo Narrows is a village of about 1,000 people, located about 500 kilometres northwest of Saskatoon.