Pit Bull Week at the Huffington Post, a screaming success, with the emphasis on the screams. Updated AGAIN

As we have come to expect, the Huffington Post has again floundered into pit bull advocacy with their week long celebration of pit bulls currently in progress.

Pit bulls in the Carolinas apparently missed the memo on the festivities. Or, possibly this is how pit bulls celebrate.

Update - To add to the misery of Huffington Post's Pit Bull week we have sad news of the critical mauling of an 18 month old child in Fayetteville North Carolina last night.  The child was attacked while his grandfather stepped out onto the porch and his mother stepped out to speak to him.  The child is in very critical condition at UNC Hospitals in Chapel Hill.  The pit bull was euthanized. Child endangerment charges are possible. Video is available at the link, this was a massive pit bull.

Update 8/27/2015
Four Oaks North Carolina

Two people were injured in a pit bull attack at the Traveler's Inn.  When police arrived on scene they found the pit bull with it's jaws clamped down on a woman's arm.  Officers attempted to remove pittie from his victim but were not successful so they shot it.  One of the victims is in serious condition.  I suspect that the residents of North Carolina and of South Carolina will be delighted to see the end of the Huffington Post's Pit Bull Week. The link includes video of firemen hosing the blood off the parking lot.  One seldom sees this after Pug attacks.  

 
Still photo of the scene.

 

8/22/2015
Spartanburg North Carolina



Porsche Nichole Cartee, age 25, was killed by the family pit bull, inside the family home, while attempting to protect her mother from the berserking pit bull.  Spike, the pit bull, has been owned and loved by the Cartee family for 10 years.  Spike was euthanized after the attack.  A quote from GoUpstate "Authorities say the pit bull "just snapped" when it began attacking the mother. Cartee's sister was also injured. Her mother was hospitalized and her injuries may require surgery, while Cartee's sister received treatment on scene."

Keep that word "snapped" in mind, we will get back to it.  This was not Spike's first violent episode, he had attacked the victim's mother in the past resulting in hospitalization but this was not reported to local authorities in an effort to protect the dog.

More from GoUpstate "Beverly Powell, mother of the victim's boyfriend, said she advised the family to get rid of the dog after the previous attack. She also said she was once attacked by another pit bull in her own yard but managed to get away with no permanent damage so Cartee's killing hits close to home for her.

"The sadness is that I told Nicole's mother, ‘What is it going to take for you to get rid of this dog?' And now it's killed her daughter," Beverly Powell said.

Porsche Nichole Cartee


Spike the pit bull.



8/24/2015
Cathy Wheatcraft, age 48, of Davie County North Carolina was mauled to death by a pit bull.  Wheatcraft  was walking to the mailbox when she was attacked by her neighbor Latisha Young's pit bull, named Patch.  Sheena Truesdale, age 31, was attacked by Patch as well and is in stable condition at a local hospital. The attack was still in progress when police arrived on the scene, the pit bull was shot dead. Patch apparently escaped from Young's home through a window while Young was not at home.  Here is the official excuse "Young usually kept the dog in her home but on Monday a storm rolled through the Cooleemee area. Davie County Sheriff Andy Stokes said that may have riled the dog and caused it to escape from home through a window while Young was not at home."

Ms. Truesdale described the attack on Wheatcraft "“When I got out here she was just laying on her stomach; she had her hands above her head and her shirt was pulled up,” said neighbor Sheena Truesdale, 31, who soon became a second victim.

“I was like ‘Patch, go home,’ and he didn’t pay attention to me, he went on licking on the lady,” 

And more on the attack  " Truesdale said Patch was a good dog and she had no idea why it attacked; a testament which was echoed by Young’s mother, Frances Tyson.

“I got a call and it said that Patch had broken out the house and killed a lady,” Tyson said. “When I pulled up and I saw all the ambulances and stuff I’m like, ‘Oh my God.’ I said, ‘It’s true.’”

“Something caused him to snap, they don’t know what it was,” Tyson said. “I just pray that the Lord just touch each and every one that’s involved.”

It was a pit bull and it went pit and killed somebody.  Why are people still wondering why the damn things snap?

The same pit bull was declared a nuisance last May when it was also at large and attacked another dog.  Young was cited at that time for failure to vaccinate.


Cathy Wheatcraft, killed by her neighbor's pit bull.


Latisha Young, owner of Patches the killer pit bull.



8/25/2015
Greenville South Carolina
Teresa Wells was attacked by her sister's pit bull, named Bull, losing an arm and a kneecap.  The dog had to be shot off  the victim,  but Heather Perez,  stated to reporters that the dog was not aggressive, he was a "good dog."  Perez purchased Bull as a Mother's Day gift for her mother, Angela Kennedy.

I'm going to let Fox News tell this story.

Greenville deputies said they heard the dog ripped off one victim's arm while en route to the scene. When they arrived on scene, the victim was still being attacked as the dog continued to chew on her arm, according to deputies. Kennedy, the owner of the dog said she and Bull, as the dog was called, were sitting on a porch when her sister pulled up on a moped. Family members said Bull would often react to loud noises and those noises would scare him.

Kennedy said when her sister, Teresa Wells, got off the moped, then called Bull's name, the dog attacked her sister.

"When Teresa come back, I had him on the leash and she called him over and when she called him over there he grabbed her by her leg- and it was from then on. He wouldn't let her go, he ripped her knee cap off," Kennedy said.

An on-scene deputy put herself in harm's way and fired shots, killing the dog, according to officers. The deputy then tried to stop Wells' bleeding. In addition to losing a limb, she also suffered several leg wounds. 

Kennedy said she tried to stop Bull, but he then attacked her. She has several gashes and bite marks on her arms and legs, but suffered non life-threatening injuries. 

Greenville County spokesman Bob Mihalic said the dog attacked its owner, on her own property. Due to those facts, there is no charge that animal control officers could file in the case.




Click here for an interview with a witness.  

Click here for a statement by law enforcement.

Who gives their mother a pit bull for Mother's Day? "Not aggressive"?  "He was a good dog"?



Here is a map showing the locations of the fatal pit bull attacks on Porsche Nichole Cartee and Cathy Wheatcraft, plus the traumatic amputation pit bull attack on Teresa Wells, and for context includes the location of the July mauling pit bull mauling death of Joshua Strother.

Keep in mind that this is Huffington Post's Pit Bull Week.

In the bizarre world of  Huffington Post pit bull advocacy we are treated to quotes like this one from HuffPo's Arin Greenwood "Pit bulls are dogs. Just dogs. Gloriously, dogs. Like all dogs, they need love, socialization, supervision -- the whole usual shebang."

Greenwood goes on to classic pit bull talking points and hysteria about breed bans legally passed by communities using their home rule rights to protect peaceful citizens and violated by pit bull owners who claim to be unaware of local law.  For added color Greenwood tells the story of her family pit bull.  My guess is that the owners of Spike, Bull, and Patch would tell similar stories.

Arin Greenwood, Huffington Post blogger.  An experienced journalist with valuable insights on public policy?  Nope, I don't think so either.

There is a great deal more claptrap included in the daily HuffPo Pit Bull Week blog postings but you will have to go looking for it.  I will not post links.  The hysteria to place these dogs jumps off the screen. Pit bull dogs posted on websites with rescuers in other states feeling instant mystical connections, marshaling networks of transporters and temporary fosters in order to import a specific dog while countless very similar dogs are warehoused in a local shelter.  There is no sense or logic here.

Jean Keating, Ohio's pit bull advocate has stepped up to blog for the HuffPo and she tells the story of pit bull rescue from the inside, while beginning with premise that "you can't define what a pit bull is and we need to move away from breed labeling."  How can you run a breed specific rescue when you can't define the dogs?


A bit of background here.   It should be remembered that Keating's rescue, run out of her home, is considered a problem in her hometown.  She has been notified by city officials that she is in violation of city law limiting the number of dogs that may be kept.  Here is a quote from the wildly Keating supportive Toledo Blade "Resident Jean Keating questioned council recently on why she was told by Bob Oberly, zoning administrator, that she was in violation of a city ordinance limiting the number of dogs on a residential property. She told council she wanted limits on dogs removed from the code. “I think dogs are considered property, and people should have as many as they can care for," she told council at a recent meeting."  She went on "“Why do we need this? I could effectively manage eight or 10 dogs on my property,”  City code limits residential property owners to three dogs.     

Evidently Keating's neighbors do not share her opinion and don't think she can care for as many as she houses, the violation notification was sent to Keating because of a complaint by a neighbor but Keating demanded a change in local law to suit her personal preferences.  Apparently the city did not cave to Keating's demands.  Click here for a link to a July 2014 interview at Keating's rescue facility in what appears to be a commercial location.  On camera Keating makes the absurd claim that passage of HB 14 makes Ohio safer by allowing dog wardens to identify dangerous dogs before an "incident" but fact does not bear this out.  In the three years since the passage of HB 14 ten people have been killed by dogs (half of those by pit bulls).  In the previous DECADE?  Six fatal attacks in the state. A bill has been introduced into the Ohio Senate to clean up the mess created by the passage of HB 14. You can't make this stuff up. But I digress.   

Breed specific advocates would make better use of time, money, and effort by EDUCATING PIT BULL OWNERS TO NEUTER AND SPAY THEIR DOGS.  The only way the pit bull problem will be solved is by a drastic decrease in the numbers of pit bull produced and the peaceful public can't do that.  Only pit Bull advocacy can create a humane solution here.

The summary for this rambling post is this.  While the HuffPo's string of pit bull advocates are creating feel-the-love pit bull advocacy posts, women and children in the Carolinas are not feeling the love. Two of them are feeling nothing because they are dead, another will be learning to manage her life after the traumatic amputation of her arm and massive injuries to her leg.  A difficult transition for a woman who formerly tooled around town on a moped.

So far Pit Bull Week has not gone well.  Possibly the HuffPo might consider a Pug Week, or a Beagle Week for a bit less controversy, and blood.