Some of you may remember Cola, the pitbull that was left abandoned in a house at 3405 N. Michigan, Saginaw, MI for more than a year after his owner, Jaime S. McGregor, moved out and left him.
In April 2008, after more than a year of neighbor complaints, including a picket, Saginaw County Animal Care Center along with Carrollton Township Police, Cola was finally rescued from his prison. Dehydrated and emaciated, he was taken to Saginaw County Animal Care Center where he was fed and cared for.
You’d think things would have started looking up for this poor dog now but no suck luck! You see, the Saginaw Animal Care Center doesn’t adopt out pitbulls and if McGregor were found guilty of the animal cruelty charges, there was little chance he would get Cola back.
Oddly enough, after leaving the dog abandoned for more than a year, McGregor actually said he wanted Cola back and even visited him weekly, which was more than he did for the year the dog after he left him at the house.
McGregor pleaded no contest to the charges and District Judge Christopher S. Boyd ordered him to pay more than $1,000 in fines and restitution, $240 in fines and court costs and $883 in restitution to the Animal Care Center or spend 90 days in jail. McGregor, who chose not to address the judge or court when given the chance, doesn’t plan to appeal the sentence. When asked if he still wanted Cola back, his lawyer, David D. Hoffman, said that he believed McGregor did.
In May, after Cola had been at Animal Care for a month, numerous animal rescue groups and individual pleaded for a reprieve for the dog but word came down then that McGregor failed to regain custody of his dog, responsibility for Cola will fall upon the Animal Care Center, where staff likely will euthanize the dog.
“Circumstances being what they are in Saginaw (regarding pit bull fighting), we don’t want to open a Pandora’s box” by adopting out Cola, then Animal Care Director, Mark A. Wachner said.
Read more… »
This is yet another story of abuse against pitbulls. We hear all the media and hype about how vicious and dangerous these dogs are, all the breed bans… why don’t we hear about all the abuse? Story after story about abuse to this incredible but horribly maligned breed. Seems an awful lot of these irresponsible owners not only don’t train or socialize them, they also don’t care for them and they subject them far too often to some of the worse abuses possible.
And in this case, the dog didn’t even belong to the man who abused it, it belongs to a relative!
A few weeks ago 25 year old David Solis borrowed the 2 year old pitbull, Princess, for ‘protection’.
When Princess was found yesterday as police were responding to a 911 call, she was the one in need of protection, from Solis. She was laying in her side, panting heavily, paws scraped and bloodied… still attached by a leash to the vehicle she was dragged by, a 1993 Honda Civic CRX.
Police guess that Solis was attempting to discipline Princess when he leashed the 45-lb brown and white pitbull to the rear window latch of his vehicle and dragged her around an oval track that encircles an apartment building in the 1100 block of North Farnsworth Avenue.
“It was brutal,” Aurora, IL Police Department spokesman Dan Ferrelli said of the alleged dragging, which caused injuries severe enough that the dog was unable to walk when police arrived about 5:30 p.m. Monday at the apartment complex on Aurora’s East Side.
Read more… »
See Update - 8/28/08 - Three Arrested!
A woman who stole a couple’s sport utility vehicle at a cemetery and later abandoned it, leaving the owners’ crippled dog inside to die in sweltering heat, remains at large, says a sheriff’s investigator.
On Saturday afternoon, Craig and Mary Michael, both in their 60s, were visiting Riverside National Cemetery to pay tribute to veterans on V-J Day.
The Hemet couple parked their Ford Excursion and left it idling to run the air conditioner for their 16-year-old wolf-malamute mix, Rebel, who suffered from hip dysplasia. They told a newspaper they were less than 20 feet from the vehicle when a woman got behind the wheel and drove off.
Read more… »
Posted on 2008 under Dog Writing & Poetry |
20
Aug
High up in the courts of Heaven today
A little dog angel waits;
With the other angels he will not play
But sits alone at the gates.
“I know that my master will come, says he
And when he comes he will call for me.”
He sees the spirits that pass him by
As they hasten toward the throne;
And he watches them with a wistful eye
As he sits at the gates alone.
“I know if I just wait patiently
Some day my master will come,” says he.
Read more… »
