March 24, 2010

To the Management of the ******** S.P.C.A., ******** Chapter,

I am writing as a follow-up to a pet relinquish at the ******** location of the ******** S.P.C.A. My family adopted Bella, a young
white AmStaff Terrier, at the end of January 2010. We arranged for Bella to meet my entire family on site at the shelter
prior to adoption, which included me, my husband, my three kids, aged 13, 10 & 7, and our 3-year old lab mix, Roscoe. We
gave Roscoe and Bella a short, neutral introduction period, followed by some concentrated outdoor playtime at the shelter
and felt comfortable with their interaction upon first meeting. We adopted Bella on January 29, 2010, after an additional
meeting with her and my family, and a second introduction to Roscoe.

Prior to adopting Bella, I had done an extensive amount of research on the pit bull breed and their specific needs. I was
prepared, upon adoption, to take the steps necessary to ensure her maximum chance at success in our family
environment. I understand implicitly that the drive to fight other dogs is inherent in this general breed, and whether they
are assessed as cold and dog-friendly or dog-selective or dog-aggressive, the standard rule of thumb is to never assume
your pit bull will not fight. Setting her up for success started by ensuring we were pairing her up with an altered dog of the
opposite sex, from another breed, and in another age bracket. Bella and Roscoe, our current lab mix and also a shelter
adoptee, met all of these initial criteria.

My next step was to introduce Bella and Roscoe on neutral territory once we brought her home (we live in Rehoboth
Beach) as opposed to marching her directly into our home upon adoption. I allowed them to get more acquainted
outdoors before bringing them both into our home together. Once Bella was inside, we introduced her to her crate. It
would become her main space for the next month, while we had her in what the pit bull advocacy community sometimes
terms lockdown...essentially, we allowed her to absorb the sights, sounds and scents of our house from a position of
safety while allowing Roscoe (already identified as dog-social) to become accustomed to her. For me, this part of the
introduction process was one of the most difficult to enforce, because I want to have our new dog with us, interacting with
us, and becoming an immediate part of the family. But I knew it was most crucial in lessening the likelihood of serious dog
aggression with pit bulls and adhered to it without deviation. My other mantra was to move as slowly as possible in
acquainting the two.

For the next month, Bella's life with us was routine and consistent. She was permitted out of her crate to relieve herself
and to have a little exercise. For the first two weeks, I hand fed her all meals in her crate. She and Roscoe could see and
smell one another but they would not have access to one another until the four week time had passed (four weeks was
arbitrary -- it was recommended as a minimum). This also gave her time to acquaint herself with my family in the safety of
her crate, without scaring her. Her crate was always wherever we were; we moved it from room to room depending on
where the family was congregating.

When we adopted Bella, she was identified at the shelter as gentle and calm (which she seemed to be); what I feel I was
witnessing, however, was an extremely shut down dog. When she was introduced to us, she did not approach us
confidently, with her tail high and her eyes bright. She was cautious, crawling toward us on her belly, desiring closeness to
the point of sliding onto our laps. It is an endearing, yet heartbreaking situation for most people to experience, myself
included. And so, while my brain said, "This dog will require a rebuilding of trust," my heart said, "I can do that for her."

i believe shutdown is a common feature of many shelter dogs' rehoming experiences. Bella is the fourth dog i've owned in
my adult life and the third shelter dog. From what i've found, gentle, calm and consistent routine are the keys to helping
the real personality of the dog emerge comfortably. In my other dogs, the process has taken about a month. In shutdown
mode, we've observed the dog won't necessarily eat at first, they may "velcro" on to me, their provider, and they make
themselves smaller in new situations or may refuse to be part of a new situation initially. It seems the longer they've been
in shelter, the more apprehensive they may be. Your shelter only had Bella a short amount of time, from our
understanding. Clearly her anxieties arrived with her when your shelter received her.

Bella's shutdown period was profound. She was deeply afraid of entering our home (in my experience, this has happened
with dogs who either have not been permitted inside or dogs who have never known a home). Once she was inside, she
was terrified of our stairs (we live in a standard two-story colonial). In addition, she needed to be taught to climb up and
down the stairs (again, i've experienced this before, and again, because the dog may never have experienced multiple
stairs). Usually they pick it up quickly after they overcome their fear of the unknown. Bella absolutely refused to come up
the stairs on her own. She very reluctantly -- and very slowly -- attempted it with me next to her, regularly, for about two
weeks. After two months, she became more proficient with the stairs, if not especially efficient. (For such an agile, athletic
dog, she kind of stumbled down the steps each day. It was the only place she ever did that...everywhere else she was very
graceful.)

The very first thing i experienced with Bella that gave me pause was that in the few times she was out of her crate in her
initial month, she took the opportunity to give a clear, low growled warning to three people who approached her at
different times. The first two occurred within her first week with us and the three different people had no similarities in
either their person, their circumstance or their approach that allowed me to identify any individual trigger in them that set
her into a frightened warning state. The first was my mother-in-law, who had walked into the room where my husband and
I were standing with Bella. The second was my father, who had walked into the house last after two other people to whom
she did not growl at.

Now all of the people in our immediate sphere had been instructed to initially walk calmly and confidently past Bella when
in our home. They were instructed to talk to her low and quietly, which is what my own immediate family was doing. It kept
a consistent level of calm in the house that would not jar her fragile confidence. I attributed the two first growlings, initially,
to her uncertainty in the situation (even though she did not growl at any of us when meeting her in the shelter), and
considered that she might be even starting to resource guard me, since I was the consistent factor in each incident. The
third person she growled at was my 10-year old son.

I worked training exercises with Bella twice daily in a mudroom adjacent to our kitchen. I was keeping the main door open
so the sun could shine through the glass screen door because Bella likes the warm, sunny spots. She and I had a 15-
minute (approximately) routine that we would work through at each feeding. When she graduated from being hand-fed in
her crate, she would be hand-fed with me in this space. She saw my son playing in our backyard through the glass screen
door, acknowledged him without initial aggression (no raised hackles, no rumbling growl, no lip curl), and then several
minutes later walked over to the door and adopted a challenge stance and started growling and barking at him. He didn't
know what she was doing from outside, and when he started walking toward the door, I cautioned him to not come
through it and instead enter from our front door. Once he was inside, Bella was introduced to him with my supervision,
and the aggression was gone. i chalked it up to resource (space) guarding. i recognized early that this was something on
which I would need to diligently work with her.

My informal training method with all of our dogs is the n.i.l.i.f. approach (nothing in life is free). Everything my dogs get
comes from me. They are required to wait at the door until all humans go out before they follow, and it must be calm.
They eat after our family and are not permitted snacks from the table. When we do treat them, it is after they've
performed a task for us (sit, stay, lay down, shake). My family is accustomed to this approach and all are very adept at it,
right down to my 7-year old daughter. It empowers them in a positive way, allows the dogs to recognize the proper
hierarchy of the home and gives them constant interaction with us.

I work from my home and my dogs are with me all day long. In addition to their scheduled training, we enlist n.i.l.i.f. training
throughout the day for fun and reinforcement. Bella was introduced to n.i.l.i.f. from day one, and I stepped up my hand-
feeding training immensely when I recognized the resource guarding. With us, she learned sit, stay, lay down and stay
down, leave it, touch, come and focus. She learned to sit before she left the house and she learned to sit and wait to be
welcomed back inside. She's smart and extremely food-motivated and it was her intelligence and motivation for food that
led to the next experience I noted with her.

After two weeks, I started training Bella in my mudroom, where I also keep the dogs' food and water bowls. My dogs are
fed twice a day, in a mealtime approach; they do not graze. We have one of those reservoir containers that holds the dry
kibble and the bowls screw into the top. It has survived 14 years of one labrador and the last 8 months of Roscoe without
incident. Bella figured out how to get the food bowl off to reach the kibble inside the reservoir her first day in the
mudroom. I had just shut the door to the room, she was still on leash (I kept her on leash with me when out of her crate in
the beginning). She had already upended the bowl and had buried her head in the mother lode of food when I noticed her.
I called her in a come command. She looked up at me, didn't move from her position, and growled low and consistent. I
noted in the back of my head that the guarding extended to food. (This didn't surprise me. She seemed skinny when we
adopted her; the medical records on shelter file from a previous veterinarian listed her as underweight, if I remember
correctly.)

I understand guarding issues and understand implicitly how the same behavior can extend over many resources, from
food to people to designated space to toys to high value treats. But I had also implemented strategies beforehand that
would lessen the opportunity to guard, as they were part of my dog-aggression diffusing arsenal. So I moved the food
storage so she would never have free access to it again (solving an immediate problem), but also never allowed the dogs
to have free access to any high value item without my consent and supervision.

The growling incidents and the food guarding with me were noted and my next step was to contact some of the pit bull-
focused online resources I had been utilizing in my research of the breed. They included Bad Rap, Animal Farm, Pit Bull
Rescue Central and The Real Pit Bull. I interfaced extensively with the online volunteers at Pit Bull Rescue Central and
discussed the two things I noted. Their recommendation was to enlist a local trainer, so I did. I requested individual training
sessions, and she came weekly over the course of three weeks with one initial evaluation week beforehand. In addition, I
continued in my process of acquainting Bella to as many different circumstances as would present themselves. I knew
socialization was a key component to increasing her confidence in new situations, so there was a core group of about 7
different people she saw regularly in our home, from our family of five to my two employees (I run a design studio out of
my home. Our designated studio space is retrofit for the dogs as well as us).

After Bella appeared to have evolved out of her resource growling (at people), we had an additional isolated incident,
where she growled at one of my employees who had entered the studio later than the rest of us, even though Bella was
already acquainted with her. My employee asked me what she should do and I instructed her to walk calmly past Bella
without making eye contact and go to her desk. She did, very calmly, and without fear. Since Bella was leashed with me
indoors, I carefully re-introduced her to the employee, and again, upon re-introduction, she sat down and waited to be
petted by my employee.

I understand pit bulls to be big personality dogs. I understand their temperament to be sound and their approach to
people to be friendly and engaging. Bella was cautious. She was submissive in her approach to people during a good
portion of time we had her -- tail down, ears back, crouched as small as she could be. Again, it seems very endearing, and
it was heartbreaking for me to observe. But it is not indicative of the breed and is atypical of sound dog behavior in
general. I was convinced that with trust building, socialization and lots of positive experience, Bella would eventually emerge
from this shell. And in time to come, little glimpses of her did emerge. We had experiences where she showed us her
zoomies, where she'd get excited and run in happy circles. She liked to cuddle (though in doing so, she made sure Roscoe
was not permitted close to her object of affection as well). She had short periods where she would act like a typical young
dog -- exploring the trash, finding a piece of tissue and sailing through the house with it, things I equate with the euphoria
of puppies and young dogs. The bursts of happiness and contentedness were fleeting; it was almost as if she was not
comfortable in a relaxed dog position.

By the end of the first month, Bella and I were regularly taking three-mile relaxed leash walks in our development (in the
last two weeks with us, she had learned to walk beautifully on leash together with Roscoe). We were using her morning
meal time to practice her training and she was having regular time outside to do her duty and explore, on leash, but off
heel.

As we were approaching the end of the first month, I had been lessening her crate time. She was slowly becoming
acquainted with Roscoe, and I was very proud of her first steps with him. She adopted puppy play stances, to which he
enthusiastically responded. She and Roscoe would have limited access to each other, and with good experience, it was
slowly being increased. By the beginning of the second month, I had weaned Bella out of full crate time and down to open
and available crate daily with only bedtime closed crate time. Her routine was mostly predictable and pleasurable, with
morning walks, lesson with breakfast, supervised play with Roscoe. This was when i started instituting my callout --I used
the phrase "dogs stop" to call them out of play at random intervals. This was a critical next step for me in ensuring the
safety of both dogs, as I knew play could easily escalate. Within weeks, both dogs were able to call out of rambunctious
play with just a firm voice command of "dogs stop". I alternated praise with treats in training to ensure the consistency of
their response, and both dogs excelled.

And then I introduced Bella to "down time" with me, that is, time after dinner, after the kids were in bed, when I would read,
watch some tv, catch up on some work, or whatever. It was often a rest time for the dogs. It was around this time that I
observed Bella taking more of a dominant role with Roscoe. I watched it carefully so I could know he was comfortable with
his new role in second place, and he was. I observed him defer to her on a more consistent basis when they were
together, and I continued to be in the lead of both.

Bella had decided at one point to claim our sofa as her own, in spite of my instruction that it was off limits. (again, not so
unusual, and more likely with a smart, bull-headed breed). I refocused her on an ottoman that she could sit or lay upon.
Once she lay claim to it, she took full ownership of it. This set up the next experience, again, in resource guarding. She
growled twice at me when I approached the ottoman. It was at this point I noted that she was also giving Roscoe serious
"what for" if he got too close to her space.

Please note that this behavior appeared to emerge as Bella became more empowered and confident in her place with us.
Please also note that I understand the propensity of her breed toward tenacity and dog aggressiveness. However,
resource guarding needs to be addressed in any pet, and the fact that her guarding tendencies did not halt at the dog, but
stepped over and onto her humans, is an aspect of her emerging personality that I did not take lightly. I continued to be in
constant communication with the online pit bull community to direct me. I continued to report any incident like this to my
trainer, so she could teach me how to curtail it. And I continued to be diligent in my monitoring of high value triggers as
well as dog time together. The dogs were never left alone together. They were crated separately when we were apart from
them and they were crated and rotated on days when unexpected visitors would drop in, since I was not yet entirely
confident in Bella's ability to cope with strangers.

For a good part of Bella's time with us, she and Roscoe would settle into a daily routine with me of a little play and a little
rest. When we had guests, they were crated, so we didn't incite one to unintentionally redirect on the other in excitement.
The kids were only given supervised time with one or the other, because I was taking as much time as i needed in
developing her trust of them. By her last week with us, their arrival home from school was starting to elicit a positive tail
wag from her, though she was still postured for protecting herself -- her mouth had not yet opened in a manner indicative
of trust and her ears were often down.

One thing we learned early about Bella was her desperate fear of certain noises, which caused her to bark uncontrollably.
It was a frightened bark, i am certain. Again, i am no stranger to this behavior, and my approach is to calmly talk to them
and massage them while the sound is going on, in the hope it can show them they have nothing to fear by the sound. I
was able to refocus her away from our morning alarm clock (it took about two weeks before she was comfortable with it;
by the end of her time with us, she was unfazed and no longer frantically barking at it). She was also crippled by our hair
dryer, our garbage disposal, our washing machine and dryer, our dishwasher and our vacuum cleaner. I enacted the same
approach for all, and it took approximately 2-3 weeks before she was able to be in the company of any of these triggers in
a calm state of mind. I bring this up at this time because about a week before I brought her back to you folks, Bella
attacked my upright vacuum cleaner when i turned it on -- she attached with such ferocity that I was stunned by it. We
had worked hard and with measured success at overcoming those fears over the last couple of months which is why I
was comfortable in using the vacuum around her at that point. (The sound fears were ongoing from day one, so we
worked them every day. We were also always anticipating and/or discovering new sound triggers). She attacked the
vacuum quickly and efficiently. I turned off the vacuum. I gave her the "leave it" command. She did not respond the first
time or the second time. The third time she did and I sat her down and calmed her. Then, praising and treating her for
calm behavior, I pushed the vacuum back and forth away from her. I continued to reinforce the "leave it" command. She
followed it. I then turned it on to its lowest setting, continued to treat her and give her the "leave it" command while it was
moving back and forth on its lowest setting. After a little longer time period, she followed it as well. I felt that was enough
for the day and decided against vacuuming around her at that point. Please note that for one month, when she heard a
noise, she was safely in crate. She barked, and I soothed and praised her for calm, quiet behavior, but she had no ability to
attack from her vantage point..

Several hours later, I went back to vacuum the room and decided she could go into her crate where I could see her and
calm her while she saw me doing it, but not so close as to freak her out. This time, for the first time, she lunged from her
crate and tried to force her way out of the crate and at the vacuum. I never vacuumed again in her presence.

And this incident was a big note for me. Prior to it, her anxiety was addressed by frightened barking, first in her crate, then
later out of her crate, but it never progressed beyond that. By the time I had the vacuum cleaner incident, she seemed as
if she had moved past specific sound fears and appeared to show no lasting anxiety around them, which is what gave me
the confidence to vacuum in her company at all. It marked an increased awareness for me because while I understand the
differences between dog-on-dog aggression versus dog-on-human aggression with pit bulls, a redirect onto a human in a
state of fear is still a very real option and her decision to finally attack what frightened her marked a concerning turning
point in her behavior. We were still learning Bella's triggers, and the fact that she had graduated to addressing at least one
fear with fight instead of flight reminded me of my need for diligence with her.

Moving forward a couple of days...Bella was due for her second round of heartworm preventative. She received it at the
end of our morning breakfast/training session, on a full stomach. She and I both came upstairs to the studio, she laid
down and then got up and vomited on the floor. It was not yet digested, and she turned around to begin re-eating it. I
allowed her to do this because I knew the heartworm meds were in that pile. But the moment she started reingesting, she
threw up again and began to walk away. I came over to clean it up, and as i started to pass her, she snapped at me. I
walked calmly over to her and put her in a sit/stay, which she did. I leashed her and removed her from the room for about
15 minutes. When I reintroduced her to the room, she was meek, even though there was no punishment of any kind
beyond her removal from us.

Please note that Bella was never struck by any of us, she never endured harsh language in her training with us and our
focus was entirely on calm and happy. I know pit bulls to be sensitive even as they can be bullheaded, and really believe
that positive reinforcement works, especially with this breed. This startled me. Even though she was able to pull out of it
after a calm-down period, I searched unsuccessfully for the cause -- I could only assume she was feeling sick to the
stomach, hence the vomiting episode, and may have been off-color at that moment and she clearly recognized the vomit
as hers -- again, resource guarding. But it had progressed from a slow, low growl in her initial guarding episodes to an
aggressive snap. Keep in mind too that my concentrated efforts focused on her resource guarding seemed to produce
continued positive results in training. When put into practice, during critical junctures, her instinct overrode her training.
Now two months of even intense training is not that much, and I realize this. My dogs are constantly reinforced, which
strengthens their bond with us as well as their power to make the right decisions. Bella seemed to go in the opposite
direction with some of this critical stuff.

I would like to point out at this time that she was not at all a raving dog in our company. She seemed to be growing from a
shy and frightened dog to a dog willing to take a dominant role between the two dogs, but still primarily submissive and
gentle with my family initially. The incidents I am reporting were ones I noted so I could address them. As her confidence
continued to build, the frequency of these localized episodes grew, as did their ferocity. I was beginning to get increasingly
uncomfortable with the turn she seemed to be taking when in the midst of one of these episodes, but I kept telling myself
that she was not yet out of her shell.

Another thing to note, too: my trainer noted her personality without any comment from me at first meeting. She asked if
Bella was tired or had some reason to be so calm during our training sessions. I told her she was like that pretty
consistently but that I sensed she was still very shut down. But Bella also had endured the trauma of a full-term pregnancy
early in her life -- from her documents, she may have been as young as 6-8 months, and it appears she carried 8 pups
and delivered 7 live pups. Her teats were still hanging low when we adopted her, and I believe her delivery was at the end
of 2009, which means she could very well have still been in physical recovery mode during her entire time with us. My
trainer believed that to be the case.

It was at this point that my pit bull contacts recommended my enlisting of a behaviorist. They felt that some of the traits
and behaviors I was describing required an adept animal behavior professional, as they were not traits indicative of sound
temperament in pit bulls specifically, and in any dog, generally. I understand you folks interact with many more pit bulls in
your day-to-day interactions than my one experience with Bella. But I have learned again and again with every advocacy
group I encountered (and i can almost recite it verbatim) that "a human-aggressive pit bull is atypical of the breed and
should be humanely euthanized." I understand why these folks believe this and stand by it -- pit bulls as a breed are not
necessarily highly adoptable in the general population to begin with. A stable pit bull with a good owner can be an
enormous ambassador of goodwill and better understanding of the breed. A fearful pit bull is an unpredictable pit bull, and
can spell the danger that the pit bull community has worked hard to eliminate. And I was troubled that Bella was getting
dangerously close to a serious occurrence of human aggression, even though it had only presented in little bursts thus
far.

My husband, who walked Bella every night, reported an incident with Bella during a walk with her two weeks ago. I may
have mentioned that she has superb leash manners. While the result was a positive experience for us, I don't believe her
manners were trained as much as this was an extension of her shut down mode. I am fairly sure of this from watching her
body language -- she paid no attention whatsoever to any outside noises when she was finally comfortable enough to do
a full walk with me (we took the walk in stages, until she was comfortable, from the end of my driveway to the end of my
street to around the block, etc., over the course of weeks). She also did not show any response or knowledge of any other
dog either approaching her or in a yard by which we walked. Again, it would seem like a dream come true, especially for
anyone who has had a leash reactive dog. But I knew it was because she was in a zone from which she had not yet
emerged. Sure enough, as she got more confident, she exuded more posturing as we approached other dogs. This started
with subtle body changes; it did not happen all at once. We took proper precautions in light of our knowledge. Not
surprisingly, the next on-leash thing we noted was that her sound fear emerged with new outdoor sounds -- light
carpentry work, a car speeding up, a horn, etc. We learned the tools to get her past the behavior and were regularly
implementing them on our walks (which was easy to do, since we did daily walks with her).

So Bella's incident with my husband started when a neighbor's dog, who is known to be territorial, challenged Bella with a
bark and stance when my husband came outside with her. Bella, for the first time, responded to the challenge with a
stance of her own. My husband quickly assessed it and removed her from the line of the other dog's vision. She
responded to my husband by redirecting her aggression onto two children walking by her on the street. Because we never
had Bella off-leash, even in our own yard, the immediate concern for the children's safety was quickly quelled. My husband
did acknowledge it, though.

I had decided to contact my vet to put me in touch with a behaviorist, if they knew one. I had started doing some online
research earlier that week. Which brings me up to the eventual fight which ensued on March 17 between Bella and my
other dog, Roscoe. It doesn't matter who started it. I understand that the pit bull is hardwired to finish it. and Bella acted
true to her breed. We believe Bella became agitated when Roscoe sniffed at a toy with which she had recently been
playing. My husband and I were actually reaching out to grab the toy to avoid exactly the incident we encountered, but it
was lightning quick, as dog fights tend to be. The difference, of course, between a dog fight and a pit bull fight is that
when our other dog was called out and responded, Bella recognized her advantage and drove home her attack. She did
not respond to our practiced callout at all. My husband could not pry her off of our other dog, who had given up
completely and was lying on his side. The only thing my husband was able to do to minimize the damage was to hold her
head in place from shaking back and forth, so she couldn't tear his ear off. Eventually, he was able force her off of our
other dog, at which point we sped into action to separate them behind closed doors while we addressed their wounds.

Bella sustained a cut above her eye and a cut between her eyes that we could see immediately. She would not allow us to
clean her up. My other dog sustained several punctures in one ear, a laceration under his front leg and a cut on his
shoulder, but otherwise, both seemed fine physically. Roscoe was terrified of Bella from that point on, and Bella, after all of
her progress with us, went into a shutdown mode more profound than when we first adopted her. She refused to walk at
all. When my husband brought her to bed that night, he carried her because she couldn't negotiate the steps, even though
she appeared to have no physical damage to her body. I cozied up her nest in her crate for her and she retreated to the
furthest corner of it. I sat next to her crate and tried to soothe her with touch and talk through that entire night. In the
morning i phoned my vet.

I knew after that dog fight that we could not safely keep Bella. Had we kept her, I don't believe she would have immediately
attacked Roscoe again, nor do I believe they would have immediately started fighting. I do believe that the barrier had been
broken in spite of my attempts to diminish the likelihood. Never trust your pit bull not to fight. They are words I know to be
true. She was simply acting out what her breed was hardwired to do. Yet, my world rocked when I realized in spite of the
intensive training, her fight instinct overrode everything else, and I had no means of controlling it.

I identify Bella as dog selective, learning toward dog aggressive. In sitting next to her crate, I reflected on the type of owner
she'd need: One with extensive pit bull experience. One who had lots of time and patience to help her through her fear
difficulties, preferably in a home with no other dogs and no other pets. Possibly in a home with no children. Always, in the
back of my head were the culminated incidents I have described above, any of which might be written off as no big deal.
Together they tell a story of an unpredictable dog with very high fear levels. And then my husband told me about (and
showed me) the bite she redirected onto him when he was trying to separate them from their fight.

A redirected bite can perhaps be classified as not a true show of aggression. I disagree. Pit bulls who showed this capacity
to redirect a bite during the height of their early dogfighting days in Europe were systematically culled from the breeding
lines. If I understand correctly, pit bulls are the only breed of dog to have human-aggressive individuals so routinely culled
from breeding lines, which resulted in a dog who was trustworthy and solid in temperament with people. I am told pit bulls
who redirected onto their handlers were identified as "manbiters" or "mankillers" and were shot on-site.

So, the next morning, March 18, I visited my vet's office. I called them to warn them that my two dogs had a fight the night
before, their wounds were not life threatening, but we'd need to address them. I also told them I wished my pit bull to be
euthanized. This decision did not come to me lightly, nor was it a kneejerk reaction to the fight of the evening before. The
Bella that was emerging before me did not seem to be exhibiting any of the aggressive inhibitions toward humans that we
equate with sound temperament dogs. Because she attacked Roscoe with the determination only her breed can muster,
and I was unable to quell it alone, I knew I couldn't keep her. Because she had no problem redirecting that aggression onto
my husband, combined with too many isolated incidents with other humans in her world that centered on aggression, I am
concerned that perhaps she is not adoptable.

I am not dismissing that there may be lots of folks who want to help when a dog in shelter needs extra attention. And I
don't want to diminish the fact that there may be people who meet Bella at the S.P.C.A. and, learning of our experiences
with her, want to give her another chance. I do not jump to the conclusion of euthanasia lightly, nor have I ever considered
it a solution to a behavioral concern. I feel that Bella's initial demeanor can be misleading.

My veterinarian felt, and correctly so, that Bella needed to be returned to your facility so you could assess her. Because
Bella exhibited only her most outward personality -- which is one of overwhelming fear (and even more so that day) -- I
know her appearance was certainly in conflict with what I tried to describe as our experience with her. We did bring Bella
back to you folks that same day that the vet recommended. She was still completely shut down when you brought her in
from my van. I have cried more tears than I knew I had, because while I never wanted this to be the outcome with this little
dog who captured my heart, i am concerned that because many of her more overt concerning traits we experienced were
slow in emerging, someone could be caught off guard.

I did suggest that euthanasia would be the kindest outcome for Bella. She appeared, to me, to be battling demons early on,
and while I desperately wanted to give her all she needed to live comfortably with us, there was an unpredictability in her
demeanor, noted in the individual incidents I've described above, leading me to believe that while she might be fine in some
circumstances, her fears are too unknown, at least to me, to accurately predict all of her triggers. And too many times, she
turned to fight instead of flight in the face of her triggers.

I apologize for the length of this letter. Yet, I did want the opportunity to share this with someone when we dropped Bella
off. You had a very busy morning and we were not able to privately share this with your manager, but for the records of
your organization, I felt that it was fair for you to know what we experienced.

One final thought: I was given a form (which I assume to be a relinquish form; I was emotional and crying and not thinking
very straight) to fill out when I arrived. I was not expecting your personnel to take Bella from my vehicle while I was filling
out the form, and it only got partially completed. I did note to the person at the desk that it needed to be indicated that she
had bitten (incident related above), but I don't know if it got marked down, because I stopped filling out the form when I
realized she was being taken away. I did not yet have a chance to learn what was to become of her, nor did I expect she
would be removed while I was filling out your administrative stuff. I was not able to say my goodbye to her, and it caught
me so off guard that I don't believe I finished writing my concerns on that sheet, which is the final reason I felt it important
to list this information for you.

Most Sincerely,

Giancarla Churchman

P.S.
I was told that Bella would certainly not be euthanized the day we brought her in. I requested that if possible, if she were to
be euthanized, if I could be notified, as I wanted to cremate her and keep her ashes. She was my dog, if only briefly. I gave
her my very best and I believe she truly was trying to give us hers. I miss her and my heart aches with the decision I had
to make.

A copy of this letter has been directed to ******** Animal Hospital and Animal Control ********.