Justice for Purebred Boxer Allegedly Dragged 4 miles behind Car

Excerpts from report in Huffington Post: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/04/24/dog-tied-to-truck-ditch_n_7128418.html :

Dog Tied To Truck, Dragged 4 Miles Before Being Thrown In Ditch

"To be blunt, his arms, his front paws, were almost completely amputated. We knew if we moved him in a certain direction, his legs would fall off"… found a rope tied around the dog's collar, and a veterinarian who assessed the dog concluded it had been dragged along the road.

The dog's "only movement was he kept attempting to get underneath a blanket," Fields said. "It was so sad because of his arms being almost ripped from his body, he could only shimmy against his chest."

Among his many other injuries, the boxer's tongue was severed, his eye ripped from his socket, and his shoulder bones exposed.

"The actual bone itself had been sheared down from dragging on the black tar," she said. "The bones were smooth."

There was simply no other choice but to euthanize the animal… it took less than a day for a woman to call Homeward Bound claiming the dog was hers and asking to retrieve its body.

The woman, Janice Madden, told the rescue shelter that her 9-year-old son had tied the boxer to the back of the family's truck the previous night, according to Fields. The next morning, Madden's husband, Claude, drove to work without realizing the dog, still attached, was desperately trying to keep up with the moving vehicle, Fields said.

"After realizing he stopped, pushed the dog in the ditch and proceeded to go to work, planning to return to the ditch after work to retrieve the dog," Fields said. "That’s what [Madden] informed me of."

Homeward Bound workers examined the truck's path Tuesday night. They determined that the dog had run along with the truck for the first mile and a half of its route before succumbing to exhaustion… For the last four miles of the route, every foot of the road showed the bloody impact where the dog had bounced before finally being left in a ditch.

When asked why her husband left the dog in the ditch, she ended the interview.
The Laurel County Police Department said it plans to present evidence -- including an eyewitness who said they stopped the truck while it was dragging the dog -- to a grand jury the second week of May. The jury will decide whether or not to press charges.