Video: LA Mail Carrier Caught Pepper Spraying Friendly Dog

LOS ANGELES, CA — The U.S. Postal Service is facing calls to fire a Los Angeles mail carrier after surveillance footage surfaced showing her pepper spraying a friendly husky dog that was safely behind the fence of a house in Watts.

The dog, a frisky four-year-old Siberian husky named Coco, was acting weird when his owner came home on Monday.

"He was rubbing his face on the grass," Coco's owner Jose Amezcua told CBS. "There was obviously something wrong with him."

Amezcua took Coco to the vet and then checked his security camera. That's when he saw what happened.

It started out as a routine mail delivery in the 1500 block of E. 111th Street in Watts. The mail carrier delivers the mail, and as she does Coco walks up to her on he other side of the gate wagging his tail. The mail carrier can be seen reaching for her pepper spray, dropping it, bending down to get it and then spraying the dog in the face from the other side of the fence.

Amezcua said he doesn't understand why she would do that. Coco wasn't even barking at her, he said.

He told FOX11 he thought maybe the mail carrier was having a bad day and took it out on the dog.

The video made him angry and was hard to watch said Amezcua. Her calm and deliberate conduct suggests she was not responding to an emergency, he said.

"I was upset. I was really mad," Amezcua said. "He's like part of the family."

The USPS responded to the incident with the following statement:

``On behalf of the United States Postal Service, we want to apologize to our customer. We do not condone our employees behaving in a manner which is not professional and courteous. The appropriate personnel and corrective action will be taken with regard to this incident as well as training given to all local carriers on how and when to use dog repellent."

The carrier's identity has not been revealed, and the USPS did not say how she was dealt with for the unprovoked spraying.

City News Service contributed to this report.