"The owners have had it put down. These are wonderful people who just did the right thing," said Sheila Wray, who last week shared the story of how Zorro, her three-month-old shepherd/husky cross, had been mauled by an unattached pit bull that appeared suddenly down at Kin Park.
Wray said Tuesday, July 2 that she had been happy to hear from the dog's owners almost immediately. "The next day after the article came out in the Citizen, I got contacted by the pit bull owner. That was really wonderful. It was real closure for me because you hear about these bad dog owners, especially in relation to pit bulls. But they were the exact opposite of all that.
"They'd adopted this pit bull two years ago from another owner. They had watched it closely and it didn't appear to have any aggression issues or anything. But they did have it chained up in the yard so my guess is they still must have had some concerns. In any case, it had gotten loose and the woman had run down to the beach shortly after the whole thing had happened and I imagine got her dog back then."
Wray had left the park to go to the veterinary clinic by that time so she was unaware of what had happened.
"The dog got put down. These are wonderful people who just did the right thing. He said it broke his heart to do it but they had to do it because if it's happened once it could happen again. And they also said they'd pick up all my vet bills. It was wonderful, it really was," Wray said.
Now, she can concentrate on making sure little Zorro is not permanently harmed by his experience.
"Oh he's absolutely not traumatized at all. He remembers, but it comes out in strange little ways. For instance, there's a big boxer who lives next door. He's a gentle giant of a dog and he's played with Zorro in the past. Well, he came running out of nowhere and spooked little Zorro and Zorro came yelping back briefly with his tail between his legs like he'd been injured and he then turned around when he realized who it was he went back and played with [the boxer] for the rest of the afternoon.
"He knows he's safe but once in a while he gets spooked."
Wray said she was happy to have the chance to talk about the story's conclusion.
"I think it's important to know the follow-up, especially around pit bulls and their owners. These people were wonderful, they were just horrified at what happened. In the owner's words, his wife was mortified by it. They contacted me, too, I didn't have to hunt them down, which I didn't want to have to do."
[So if we're going with the argument that it's bad owners who train them to be this way, then we must blame this couple and say that they must have beat the dog and abused it and "made" it mean. Or are we going to give them a pass and say that, although they'd owned the dog for two years, we're going to blame the previous unnamed owner - that it's his fault that this dog attacked this puppy?]
(Cowichan Valley Citizen - July 2, 2013)
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