Friday, April 04, 2008

Congo cheats the executioner

Congo (aka “The Mauler”) will live. His life has been spared.

Congo, as you may recall from previous blogs, is the German shepherd that chewed up a landscape worker that arrived in the early morning hours of June 5, 2007, to work on the 10-acre property in Princeton Township, NJ.
The attack resulted in the Hispanic worker, who apparently spoke little or no English, suffering some horrendous injuries that required hospitalization and lots of stitches and patching.

Several weeks after the attack, a municipal court judge ruled that Congo was a vicious dog and it looked like Congo was going to be dispatched to that big dogbone in the sky. The dog’s owners mounted a legal campaign to save Congo’s life and dog lovers across the state protested the injustice of dispatching Congo to "a better place," just because he ripped apart an "illegal" worker, in their eyes apparently, little more than a dog chew.

The court finally ruled that Congo will not be euthanized but that its owners pay $50 fines for Congo and each of the then 3-month-old German shepherd pups that joined in the attack. Also, the dog’s owners are to keep Congo and the other dogs behind a fence on their property, and that the property will be posted with warning signs.

And so ends the saga of Congo , a case that ignited the passions of dog lovers throughout the state of New Jersey.

Click on the headline to access the article in April 3 issue of The Times of Trenton. – Ron Hall

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