Rough lives of 4 pitbulls likely will end

Chained behind an abandoned house, the dogs are taken to the county shelter.

By LAURA HEINAUER

© St. Petersburg Times, published July 23, 2000

ST. PETERSBURG -- The fleas, the smell, the growling and barking.

Workers at a pond-cleaning business say they will not miss having to turn their heads to the plight of the four menacing pitbulls that lived in squalor outside an abandoned house next door.

They say that for years the dogs have been nothing but a nuisance in this industrial area just south of Central Avenue. Still, employees say they also can't help but feel sorry for the dogs, which now likely have less than a week to live.

"It's a shame," said Stan Cisilski, who owns the neighboring company, which cleans lakes, ditches and ponds. "I went home the other day when it was raining really hard, and I was crying just thinking about them. I really hated that they needed to be taken away, but if their suffering stops, then it's for the best."

On Monday, Pinellas County Animal Services impounded the four pitbull mixes living at 2251 Fairfield Ave. S after a report that two were fighting violently and that one had broken loose from one of the 4-foot-long thick and rusty chains they each had. Mark Pringle, who works at Cisilski's company, at 2231 Fairfield Ave. S, just east of the abandoned house, said he reported the situation to authorities after he found one of the dogs eating out of Cisilski's dog's food bowl.

Pringle, who has worked there for just over a year, said he watched the neighboring dogs fight each other to the point of exhaustion two other times, but reported it this time. "I used to think they were playing, because there would be no noise," Pringle said. "Then one day I went over there and I saw them just laying on top of each other on the ground with their mouths around each other's throat."

Cisilski said people and dogs have been in and out of the property next door for five or six years.

"I couldn't tell you if it's been the same dogs or not, but they've always been pitbulls and they have always lived outside," he said.

Joseph Kimble, the owner of the property, said he has been taking care of the dogs for their owner, who lived in the house but moved to Tallahassee. He said that he did not know the owner's name but that he had been feeding and watering the dogs daily. He said he paid for the dog food as a favor to the owner.

"I don't think they had a right getting those dogs," he said. "I'm going to get in touch with (their owner), but I don't got no money to go see about no dogs."

If an owner or the care-giving agent comes to pick a pet up and shows proper identification, the county must turn over the animal, said Dr. Welch Agnew Jr., assistant director of Pinellas County veterinary services. To get the dogs back, the owner or agent will also have to pay a running-at-large citation, a no-registration citation and a boarding fee of $5 a day, which is sometimes negotiable, he said.

"It's certainly not the worst we've seen, but they are certainly not well maintained," Agnew said. "Our officer found them in a situation with no shelter (and) minimum water that could be potentially threatening to their welfare."

On Monday, two of the dogs were tied to a dilapidated fence, another was tied to a stake stuck in the middle of the yard, and one was wandering around freely, Pringle said. Only one had a shelter -- an overturned plastic garbage can, he said. Pringle was doing paperwork when the company owner's dog, a purebred chow, started to bark, as it does whenever someone approaches the complex, he said.

"I went out there and there he (the pitbull) was, eating out of our dog's bowl," Pringle said. "I grabbed a baseball bat to shoo him away, but he didn't want to leave that food."

Pringle said he was able to coax the dog, which he said was foaming at the mouth, away from the food without using force, and called Cisilski. Pringle said Cisilski didn't want his dog to eat any of the remaining food, so Pringle threw it over the fence for two of the other dogs to finish. At the sight of food, he said, they started growling and fighting wildly.

Cisilski said: "Mark called me when it happened. He was pretty upset. His voice was shaking and he said he couldn't take it anymore. Everyone comes there and has to turn a blind eye to it. He said he just had to put a stop to it."

Both Cisilski and Pringle said that different employees in the past had made phone calls about the animals.

"Why this hasn't happened until now, I don't know. It would hurt me every day, because I would always have to turn my head to it," Pringle said. "I've wanted to call in the past, but everyone told me I'd just be wasting my time."

An animal control officer and a police officer arrived at the house about 50 minutes after Pringle's call, and did not observe the dogs fighting, said Dr. Kenny Mitchell, director of Pinellas County veterinary services. Animal control records show that Monday's incident is the only time that animals have ever been picked up on that block.

"Sometimes people call the police or the SPCA," Mitchell said. "If they call the police after hours, we might not hear about it. (Monday) was the first we heard of this at that residence."

The police and the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals also said they had no records of complaints at the abandoned house.

"This is the first time I heard of trouble with dogs at that address," said community officer Vincent Trubilla.

Trubilla said he did not see blood or any other indication that the dogs had been fighting, but both he and the animal control officer agreed that all four dogs should be taken in for their own safety.

At the animal shelter, the two younger dogs were examined and not found to have any scars that would indicate fighting, Agnew said. Examinations have not been made on the older dogs because their dispositions indicate that they might attack, he said.

On Wednesday, the younger dogs seemed to be in good spirts, barking and wagging their tails when someone approached their cage. The older ones, however, stayed farther back, eyeing with suspicion anyone who passed. "They all have bad skin and they probably have heartworms. The older ones definitely need veterinary care," Agnew said. "We require that the owner take care of them in a humane way. Typically, if they come in in really bad shape, we'll go back out and recheck to make sure they are being cared for properly."

In the meantime, the county will try to notify the caretaker and the owner and hold the dogs for 10 days. If they are not recovered, the dogs will be put through an adoption screening. "It's possible that one of the younger ones will make it though the adoption process," Agnew said. "The other one is too thin and the older ones are too mean. They probably won't make it."

A dog owner himself, Cisilski has picked up several dogs from the shelter. The chow whose food bowl was being raided Monday, Fozzi Bear, was in danger of being euthanized before the company owner adopted him. "If the dogs are going to be euthanized, it's because (Kimble) didn't do the right thing," he said. "I've thought about it, which is worse -- the suffering they had to go through or the euthanizing them? Even if it does come to that, I know they will go to a better place. All dogs go to heaven."

- Times researcher Caryn Baird contributed to this story.

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