Bad: Earlier this month, Metro police in Nashville arrested six people in connection with a drug trafficking investigation. While raiding the home of Michael A. Davis, one of the six charged, police discovered dozens of chained pitbull type dogs in the yard. Some of the dogs were emaciated and others had open wounds (photos of the dogs here). In addition, police found items often associated with dogfighting including canine treadmills, syringes, and a rape rack. WSMV reports that 38 dogs were transferred to the Nashville pound last Tuesday as a result of the raid.
Worse: The night of the seizure, five of the “rescued” dogs, all of whom were apparently unsupervised, were involved in a fight which erupted after two of them got loose. One dog was killed, another was seriously injured and the other three sustained minor injuries. After the needless death and suffering on the rescuers’ (non-existent) watch, officials decided it might be a good idea to supervise the dogs 24 hours a day.
Worst: After the seizure, the county “discovered” that people had been begging the Nashville pound to help the dogs chained at the Davis home for years. As far back as 2010 and as recently as 2013, citizens had been reporting that Davis’s dogs were being neglected and possibly used for fighting. The county was “concerned with the lack of documentation of these complaints” and will investigate itself in the matter. In the meantime, two of the pound’s ACOs are being paid to not work during the investigation.
It sounds as if these dogs could have been rescued – for real, not the fake kind where they end up dead and injured the night they get “saved” – years ago if the Nashville pound had been doing its job. Unfortunately, Nashville has long considered its “job” to be killing and if the dogs had been rescued in response to the previous complaints, they likely would have been killed under Nashville’s only recently modified Kill Them All pitbull policy. Tragically, this way too late botched rescue is probably the best these abuse victims could hope for in Nashville.
(Thanks Karen and Clarice for the links.)