“Sire”, a Bulldog puppy in Sioux City, peed on the carpet last June. He peed on the carpet because his owner had fed him several bowls of beer and then didn’t take him out to pee. By way of accepting responsibility for his own bad judgment and mistakes, the owner beat the puppy to death in front of his friends:
[The owner, Bobby Loggins] straddled the pup and restrained it with one hand while using the other to repeatedly strike blows to the dog’s head. He then picked Sire up by his ears and tail and took him outside through a back door.
Witnesses said (and later testified) that when Loggins eventually brought the puppy back into the house and placed it on the kitchen floor, that the brown and white pup was bleeding from the mouth and nose, shaking and unable to move.
“To me it looked like the dog was paralyzed,” [Chad] Peterson stated. “He was shaking. It looked like convulsions. He was coughing up blood.”
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Guest Kollin Jones said he’d witnessed Loggins rubbing the dog’s nose into the carpet before pinning it down to inflict additional punches.
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Loggins was charged with animal torture, though Iowa’s current animal cruelty/torture laws allowed no more than aggravated misdemeanor charges being filed in his case, which carried a sentence of up to just two years in prison and a $6,000 fine. On June 18, 2009, Loggins pleaded not guilty to inflicting the 30 blows to Sire’s head that caused the puppy’s death.
Loggins was found guilty by judge Gary Wenell in January who noted the “depravity and sadism” of the crime. The same judge imposed a fine of $650 and sentenced Mr. Loggins to a month in jail, with credit for time served. And this makes sense because, in the judge’s words:
“The dog was his own. It was not some valuable fancy show dog belonging to another. It was not a neighbor boy’s pet dog. It was an elderly person’s companion. We do not have a statewide problem with this kind of a crime.”
Let that be a warning to you depraved and sadistic dog torturers in Sioux City – Do not beat someone else’s puppy to death – only your own puppy is appropriate for punching in the head until he’s dead. If you do beat someone else’s puppy to death, you may have to stand before Judge Wenell and believe me, he could potentially have a vaguely disapproving look on his face and cast it in your general direction. And I don’t think you want to deal with that. So remember, torture your own puppy to death and we’re good.