An Inhumane Shame

Aw, shoot...

Some of you may remember that a while back I wrote about my neighbor's dogs. We had a couple pit bulls from up the street attack our across-the-street neighbor's dog, nearly killing it, and our over-the-fence neighbor's pit bull and pit-rott mix (or something that looks like it could be a pit-rott mix anyway) both attacked their third dog, putting the small pooch in the doggy hospital.

Since then the two pit bulls from up the street have been put down, and the pit-rott was given a shock collar to keep her under control (which baffled me a bit as it was the OTHER pit bull that was chewing on the small dog). The little dog, Sandy, has been attacked two more times since then by these two dogs, but the neighbors STILL refused to keep the three dogs separate. Sandy spent most of the summer with a leg cast on and her mouth wired shut, cowering in fear of the other two dogs she was forced to share a yard with.

Sandy passed away yesterday afternoon after being attacked yet again by the pit bull (the pit-rott jumped in the fun after little Sandy was half dead and the two played tug-of-war with the little pup).

Animal control came to the neighbor's house (again) and spent several hours over there, eventually leaving with the pit bull. They're NOT going to put the pit bull down, though, as the neighbors are appealing the dog's fate in court, and are thinking about passing a petition around the neighborhood to get the dog back. "Oh, she's harmless, she's my baby!" the neighbor keeps saying to everyone. "If that little dog hadn't provoked her none of this would have happened! I can't believe they came and took my baby away!"

We're really, REALLY hoping the City of Sioux City chooses to do the right thing and keep the pit bull out of our neighbor's hands -- they're good people, but they simply can't control their animals. And now one of them is dead.

I'm still worried about the dog they still have -- the pit-rottweiler mix. She jumps the fence several times a day and runs off. By court order she's wearing a shock collar, but the neighbors never use it ("Oh, it just scares her so much"). We have a LOT of small children in this neighborhood. A vicious dog + small children = bad, bad things.