Nancy Benevento-Brown, owner of the Island Safe Harbor Animal Sanctuary, said she finds it hard to believe that Reese, a dog she saved from extermination just two weeks before, could ever bite the hand that feeds him. But when a volunteer opened Reese's cage to take him outside, he suddenly snapped.
"We've had no issues with it at all," Brown said. "It rode with me in the car, I took it out walking. I sat in the kennel with it, I fed it out of my hand."
Emergency services were called to the shelter. Brown said she tried to get inside to calm the dog herself, but the sheriff's deputies wouldn't let her.
"That dog was still mobile inside the area, and aggressive," said Ottawa County Sheriff Steve Levorchick. "That dog came toward our deputies, and the girl was crying…She said she'd been bitten to the bone."
The deputies fired two shots at Reese, who ran into a corner and hid. A veterinarian later put the dog down.
Brown said this is the first time anything like this has happened at her shelter, and she doesn't want the dog's breed to take the wrap.
"This happens with any type of dog, given the right situation," she said. "I have been bitten many times, and the dogs that bite me are Chihuahuas. We don't want this to ever happen again. We want to go on with our mission and vision and safeguard volunteers, people, and our animals."
(Toledo News Now - Feb 13, 2013)
