But as Harry's young master watched on in horror, the ball of fluff he had raised from a puppy was ravaged and dismembered by two male pit bulls who had happened by minutes earlier
The incident has left Lena Wirth and her son, 14-year-old Brenden, shaken, angry and fearful.
"You don’t understand how awful those five minutes were," Lena Wirth said.
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| From left, Lena Wirth, Brenden Wirth, 13, and Savannah Wirth, 16, sit on their back porch holding their remaining dog, Tony, a 7-year-old Yorkshire Terrier, near where two dogs killed their dog Harry, a 5-year-old Pomeranian. |
"That helplessness has been eating me all week. What if it had been a child?"
After dispatching with Harry last Friday afternoon, the roaming dogs romped off, before the arrival of animal control officers summoned by Wirth's frantic call to 911.
"She was hysterical," said assistant St. Joseph County animal control officer Brooke Bingaman. "She had just watched her dog get torn to shreds. Her boy saw the whole thing go down. Whenever kids are involved, that makes everything worse -- that was his little dog," Bingaman said.
Bingaman and another officer took a description of the offending dogs and immediately set out to find them, spotting them in a backyard just a few houses down the block.
Bingaman knocked on the door, she said, but the man who answered said they were not his dogs. He owned a female mastiff, he said, and she was in heat. He agreed to bring that dog outside to help attract the male dogs close enough to capture.
Bingaman tossed him a baseball bat lying in the snow outside and he looked at her in surprise.
Having just witnessed the ravaged dead dog, she said, she was not sure what to expect of the male dogs.
But when she whistled, the chocolate-and-white pit bull immediately came to her, dragging his belly on the ground and urinating in submission.
"I got a got leash around him, and loaded him into the truck just fine," she said. "He was so submissive I could not tell his gender, and he was not people-aggressive."
The other dog was not as cooperative, circling back toward the female dog but never within range of the officers or their tranquilizer gun. Bingaman said after 45 minutes they gave up when the dog ran southward out of site.
Tom Miller, director of the St. Joseph County Animal Control, took up the search from there, every day fanning out in ever widening circles in the direction of the wind that day, reasoning the dogs may have been attracted to the neighborhood by the scent of the female dog.
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| Tony, a 7-year-old Yorkshire Terrier, sniffs at the memorial laid for his deceased housemate, Harry, a 5-year-old Pomeranian who was killed in the backyard of the dogs' owners, the Wirth family. |
Thursday, across the state line into Indiana, his hunch paid off.
"I looked for signs that people might have dogs. People who have pit bulls frequently tie stuff from trees," he said, for the dogs to use as toys.
He stopped at a house with a yard enclosed by a fence, with electricity along the bottom of the fence and tires and ropes hanging from tree. "That tells you it's a pit bull playground," Miller said.
He got out of his car, whistled, and "here they came tearing around the side of the trailer," one tan-and-white dog closely matching the description given to him by Bingaman.
Miller called Bingaman, and she drove down to LaGrange County, Ind., and made a positive identification.
When the animal's owner learned what had happened, she was very remorseful, Miller said. She had known the dog had gotten out, and had reinforced the fence, she told Miller. But she had no idea what had happened while it was on the loose.
"It wasn’t a shocker that the dog had gotten out, but it was a shocker what had happened," he said.
"We’re 99.9 percent sure that’s the dog. Now that the owners are aware what happened, what has the potential to happen," they have taken steps to make sure the dog doesn't get loose, Miller said.
Because the dog lives across the state line, it would take a court order to seize it, Miller said.
The other dog remains at the St. Joseph County animal shelter while authorities try to find its owner. "That person may have no idea their dog did that," Miller said.
Bingaman said that, at the shelter, the dog " is nicest dog ever," friendly and submissive. "But pack mentality is a strong primal drive in a dog," she said, and dogs on the loose instinctively "pack up" with an Alpha dog in command.
She suspects that's what happened last Friday. Harry the Pomeranian "was a little squeak toy to them."
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| Brenden Wirth, 13, holds a favorite toy of his deceased dog, Harry, a 5-year-old Pomeranian, which he has placed with other objects of Harry's on a table to make a memorial. Harry was killed by two dogs who entered the Wirths' back yard and attacked him in front of Brenden and his mother Lena Wirth. |
To Lena Wirth, Harry was "like one of my children," she said. "It’s been a really bad week for me. People are, like, 'Well it was just a dog,' but it wasn’t just a dog. It was MY dog."
Wirth said she bought Harry for her son for his 9th birthday, a puppy that was "a little tiny ball of fur," who grew into an animal with a big personality. Every Friday, he would ask to be let out on his chain for the pleasure of barking ferociously at the garbage truck when it came by, Wirth said. Last Friday, when she realized he hadn't yet scratched at the door to be let back in, she went to the window, and was alarmed to see two big dogs, one on either side of Harry, between him and the house.
"I opened the door to yell something, but they didn’t move," Wirth said, "so I went back in and got a big broom to see if could scare them off with that."
When she went back out, though, the dogs began to advance on her, growling, she said. When turned to get back into the house, she discovered the door had shut, locking her outside.
"My son was here and I was banging and banging for him to the open door." When he did, she said, they called 911 and began a frantic search for something with which to drive away the dogs.
"Harry was on a leash, he could not run, and it all happened so fast," Wirth said. "Within not even a minute the big one had grabbed Harry in his mouth, and I was yelling and screaming. That dog was so big and Harry was so small, and he wouldn’t let him go. He was tearing him apart.
"I knew within that second he was not going to make it. (The larger dog) pulled him so hard his collar came off, and they threw him" and tried to run off with his body, Wirth said.
At that point, "I just went out there, I was going crazy, and eventually they moved off. "
Wirth said she and her son have been traumatized by the whole event.
She was supposed to report to work at the front desk of the Holiday Inn Express in Howe, Ind., for her afternoon shift. She did not report, and has quit the job, she said, not wanting to talk to coworkers about the death of the dog.
"If he had gotten hit on the road it would be a little different, I’d feel like it was my fault. But for them to come to my yard ...," she said.
Wirth said Friday she was supposed to talk to animal control officers about how to proceed with the case, if to proceed at all.
She doesn't know what to tell them, she said.
"At that second, I wished them both dead," she said, But, she admits, "Harry wasn’t always a super nice dog either, so I try to turn it around and think 'What if it was my dog, would I would I want someone coming after me, making me put my dog down?"
Restitution?
"There isn’t any amount of money" that would do, she said, because "money can’t replace him in any way."
Justice?
"My son wants (the dogs) to be put down, which is sad because he's the biggest animal lover."
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| Tony, a 7-year-old Yorkshire Terrier, looks around the living room in the Wirths' home where he lives. Tony's companion, Harry, was killed by two dogs who entered the Wirths' back yard and attacked him in front of Brenden and his mother Lena Wirth. Lena says Tony has been afraid to go outside and doesn't want to be left home alone in the week that has passed since the attack. |
Peace of mind?
"We’ve been a basket case for entire week," she said. "I keep thinking: 'What if it was one of my kids, and I’m out here. ... What if I need protection? I didn’t have anything, anything. Should I have a gun? I’m still real nervous. It worries me to think a dog that mean is living across the field. What if it gets out again when me and my little niece are out in the backyard?"
There are no easy answers, Wirth said.
"You want something, but it's hard to know what."
Brooke Bingaman said when she brought the chocolate pit bull to Lena Wirth for a positive identification, Brenden came too -- and before anyone could stop him, in his fury and grief, he spat in the dog's face.
This much, Miller said, is certain: "This will stay with that kid for the rest of his life."
(Mlive - March 15, 2013)
