This inattention ended in death: Pit bull Dada was put to sleep at Christmas because the local animal shelter made a terrible mistake.
The dog had run away from its owner, Monica Lopez, from Champaign, Illinois. For days she looked for her darling.
Just before Christmas she received the redeeming news. Dada had already been handed in to the shelter on December 18. You can pick him up after the holidays. “They told me that by then he would be safe there and be warm,” Lopez wrote on Facebook.
But while she was looking forward to the agreed pick-up date, Dada was simply injected to death in the home despite all promises!
“An unfortunate mistake,” says Darlene Kloeppel, head of the authorities. The district would normally keep captured dogs at the shelter for five days, then decide on the animals’ future.
When Lopez phoned the shelter on December 23, the decision had apparently already been made to have Dada euthanized. The note written after the conversation that Dada should stay alive was tragically overlooked, Kloeppel said, according to media reports.
Animal lovers are appalled. The responsible authorities would even receive hate messages and angry calls from abroad, said Kloppel.
The owner Lopez is just sad: “You weren’t just any dog,” it says in her farewell greeting to Dada. “You were my heart, my baby, an angel. Mommy misses you every day, but I know you’re good at dog heaven. “