Nightmare In Hamden — The Untold Story of Kato and Kleo
Around 6 pm that day in October 2012, Kim Miller of Hamden, CT, was working in her yard when somebody – whoever was it, she never saw – opened the gate to her yard while she was busy in work. Her two Rottweilers – Kato, a 2-year-old male, and Kleo, a 1-year-old female – ran outside. Catching a glimpse of them getting out of the yard, Miller ran after them to bring them back. She was about half a minute behind the dogs and when she arrived at the scene of the incident – the front yard of a neighbor’s house almost 300 feet from her own – she saw a woman in her late forties hitting and kicking the dogs. As an eye witnesses later confirmed to the owner, the woman had run downstairs from the second story of her house to attack the dogs after her granddaughter, age 6, got scared of the sight of dogs coming toward her yard. There has been no evidence the dogs attacked her and no proof that the dogs meant to attack her prior to her attack on the dogs. The girl, like many children do, got scared at the sight of dogs running toward her yard and ran inside the first floor neighbor’s house with a scream. That is when Cynthia Reed, the child’s grandmother, came running down the stairs with something in her hand and started hitting the dogs as well as kicking them. Finding themselves under attack, the dogs reacted and bit her in self-defense. The scene immediately caught attention from neighbors.
While Miller arrived and ran to get her dogs, she was preceded by two guys who attacked the dogs – one with a baseball bat who kept hitting the dogs repeatedly while the other pulled over his car such that the dogs were trapped within a circle and had little way to escape. The guys beat the dogs with such force that they barked and whimpered in pain while the owner held a freighted and unsteady Reed to support her. Miller kept begging aloud to the guy with the baseball bat to stop hitting the male dog as the female dog had slipped away, finding a little space in the scene. Finally, the guy with the bat stopped after several cries from Miller begged him not to hurt the dog. When she got the dogs home, they were still shivering and whimpering, crouched in a corner from the trauma inflicted on them at Reed’s yard. Kato was brutally beaten and needed urgent medical treatment.
Kato and Kleo have never attacked anyone in their life. They didn’t attack the child either; and it has not been proven that the dogs meant the child any harm. Many children that age get scared of almost any harmless thing because of their appearance. This seems to have happened to the little girl in Miller’s neighborhood. But the way her grandmother responded by jumping to the assumption that the dogs were dangerous does not prove the dogs were so. And while the girl was secure in her house, the grandmother did not call the animal control or even police for help. She took matters into her own hands, ran downstairs to hit the dogs, making them scared and on the defensive.
The brutal beating of Kato and Kleo and lack of proof about any harm or intended harm didn’t stop the local animal control from seizing them and putting them on death row. Without a shred of evidence, and without an independent assessment by a certified dog behavior expert, the dogs were declared “vicious” and hence liable to be put to death. Miller appealed against this injustice to the Department of Agriculture and her appeal is being heard now while the non-profit The Lexus Project is representing Kato and Kleo in the court.
Will Kato and Kleo get free from the ongoing terror of victimization without reason? Can they be held responsible for defending themselves against human aggression? These are questions that will only be answered by the final decision on Miller’s appeal. What demands close attention at the moment is the fact that the case was misrepresented by a number of media outlets so as to make the dogs look vicious and thus making the story sensational with no regard for fact or objectivity or professionalism. But the facts underlying the brutal victimization of these two sweet harmless family pets will not remain hidden. More on Kato and Kleo’s case will come out including the role of media in the suffering which both the dogs and their owner have been going through for the past 7 months and the real motives of the neighbors in targeting the dogs.
By
Source http://corvalliscitynews.com/nightmare-in-hamden-the-untold-story-of-kato-and-kleo/
To this day people from all over have begged and pleaded for help. "NO ONE WILL STEP UP"! (WILL YOU)?! voice your outrage for these helpless dogs! Ms. Miller has reached the Federal court level in her fight to get her pups home! The attorneys, Connecticut Department of Agriculture and the Town of Hamden, Connecticut continue to file motions to delay the court. While they do this Kato and Kleo sit in their cages, 23 hours a day, 7 days a week! Please find it in your heart to join in anyway you can. RT, Share on Facebook, Sign The Petitions. Something is Always Better than doing NOTHING.
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