Blue, the pit bull with the checkered past, is put to sleep
By Nancy Needham nancy@theacorn.com

FENCE IS FIXED- The kennel that housed Blue, a pit bull that had attacked several residents and other dogs, has been repaired at the Agoura Animal Shelter. Somebody cut through the fence and saw to it that Blue had an escape route.

Blue, the pit bull that recently went on two bloody attacks in Thousand Oaks, has been put to death.

"He was euthanized right away due to the circumstances and a sample to check for rabies was sent to Ventura Public Health," said Michelle Roache, deputy director of Los Angeles Animal Care and Control.

The first attack was on 60year-old Cheri Lee while she was walking her 8-pound Shih Tzu, Rosie, on the greenbelt near her home. When Lee held Rosie in her arms to protect her from the larger dog, Blue took a chunk of flesh out of Lee's arm, leaving her with a lot of pain and the need for skin grafts and plastic surgery, Lee said.

At first the bite was regarded by animal control as the result of Lee's trying to break up a dog fight and not what it actually was- an attack on a woman while she was holding her dog, Lee said.

Animal control authorities allowed the owners of the dog to keep him under quarantine at their home until Lee went to the shelter and showed them photos of what her arm looked like before treatment, she said.

Eventually animal control took over custody of the licensed and neutered dog and put him in the Agoura Animal Shelter- in one of the outside kennels. Blue was at the end of a row of kennels where people, often with small children, could walk up and down and look for a pet to adopt.

"The dog was put there because the shelter is an extremely small one. Unless the dog is extremely dangerous and lunges at people, we put them out there," Roache said.

While Blue was in animal control custody, Lee said that an animal control officer she was speaking to on the phone told her what a sweet dog he was. Lee said she felt that the officer was seeking permission from her to allow Blue to be rehabilitated and adopted out to someone who could control the dog.

Roache said she hadn't heard about anyone calling Lee with such a request. She'd been told, Roache said, that all the paperwork indicated the dog would be euthanized as soon as his 10-day quarantine was up.

"It's not normally the county's procedure to adopt a dog out, especially a pit bull, that has a biting history," Roache said.

The day before Blue was to be put down, someone broke into the shelter in the middle of the night and used bolt cutters to release the dog. Later that day, he was running the streets again. He walked in the front door of someone's Thousand Oaks home and killed their family's cat, chased someone else's pet cat, attacked another small dog in the neighborhood and bit three people.

After that, he was immediately put down, Roache said.

"We quarantine them for the public health departments- Ventura and Los Angeles County- they send vets to the animal shelter and do the checking for rabies," Roache said.

Police are investigating the theft of the dog from the shelter.

Anyone with information can call Los Angeles County Detective Victor Paladino at (818) 8785544.