MINOOKA (CHICAGOPRESSRELEASE.COM) — Just before Cyndi Campbell left last month for vacation, she dropped off her little dog Tootsie at the vet. She felt a little guilty about it.
Tootsie, a 12-year-old West Highland terrier, never had been boarded at a kennel. If Campbell had to leave town in the past, her son and a neighbor looked after the dog at her home in Minooka.
Tootsie was a timid girl and spooked easily, even by everyday things, like spiders. But on this occasion, the usual arrangement wouldn’t work, so Campbell had to make other plans.
She decided to take Tootsie to Minooka Animal Hospital, 103 Industrial Drive. Campbell thought everything would be just fine. It was her longtime vet, after all. And Tootsie knew the place — she was there every six weeks to be groomed.
Then it was time to go.
“I gave her a big hug, and I said, ‘Give me a kiss,’” Campbell remembered. Tootsie gave her nose a tiny flick of the tongue. “And I told her, ‘I’ll be right back.’ Whenever I leave the house, if I don’t take her with me, I tell her I’ll be right back.”
So Campbell was off for three relaxing days in the Wisconsin Dells. Her daughter had organized a family trip to a resort with an indoor water park as a gift — Campbell had just turned 59, and she had had a tough few years. It was time to have fun.
In February 2009, her husband Woody Campbell had died of esophageal cancer, a year after he was diagnosed. Getting over that was hard, but she had her children, her grandchildren, her friends and Tootsie.
“Woody loved Tootsie, too. I had told him that when she gets so old that she would have to be put down, he would have to do it,” Campbell said. “None of us could do it.”
When Campbell’s family arrived, the hotel unexpectedly upgraded them to a suite, and her grandchildren loved the pools, an indoor taste of summer. The trip was great — until Campbell’s cell phone rang the last night. She recognized the number of Minooka Animal Hospital and picked it up.
“The doctor said, ‘I am calling regarding Tootsie.’ And my heart sunk,” Campbell said.
There had been an accident.
“She said Tootsie had been attacked by a pit bull and she died.” Campbell can’t remember exactly what else was said, but she recalls thinking that her husband was gone, and now her dog was, too.
“I said, ‘How could you let this happen?’”
Although the events weren’t completely clear that night to Campbell, there is a hand-written report documenting the incident from Grundy County Animal Control. Cosmo Tedone, a lawyer with Chuck Bretz and Associates of Joliet and Campbell’s attorney, has a copy.
The day Tootsie was killed, Minooka Animal Hospital employees were cleaning the indoor cages, according to the report. A worker took the female pit bull and put it in an outdoor kennel, and then put Tootsie in the adjacent one, according to the report.
“(The pit bull) had chewed through the cage and pulled Tootsie by her head and neck through the opening,” according to the report. When someone checked on the dogs, it was too late.
The animal hospital knew the pit bull had a history of being aggressive to other animals, Tedone said. The fact is mentioned in the report.
“I called the owners of the pit bull and talked to (a woman),” the writer of the report stated. “She was very upset and did not understand how this had happened. She stated that she told Minooka Animal (Hospital) that the dog was aggressive.”
Although it was an accident, it should never have happened, Tedone said. The pit bull shouldn’t have been anywhere near Tootsie.
“If you know a dog has that propensity, why don’t you keep it somewhere else?” he asked. “Or at least keep it leashed.”
Tedone filed a civil complaint Thursday in Grundy County court accusing Minooka Animal Hospital and owner Dr. Jay Frederickson of negligence. It seeks damages of up to $50,000.
When Frederickson spoke to Tedone before the complaint was filed, the vet offered to reimburse Campbell for the price of a new dog. He also offered a year of free services.
“Who would want to keep their animal in that facility after losing trust in them?” Tedone asked, adding that he sought a written plan explaining how the clinic would avoid similar situations. Frederickson wouldn’t agree, Tedone said.
“I don’t want this to happen to anyone else,” Campbell said.
Frederickson was out of town when the incident happened but spoke to The Herald-News by phone.
“This is a very bad tragedy,” the vet said Tuesday. His employees are terribly upset. “In all my years, nothing like this has happened. But as bad as we feel, (Campbell) feels much much worse. A dog literally tore the fencing off.”
The two outdoor kennels aren’t being used now, Frederickson said. And he has decided never to board aggressive animals again.
That doesn’t change anything, of course. Tootsie is gone. And Campbell keeps thinking of one thing: her terrified little girl, trapped in the jaws of a much larger dog.
“All I can see is her suffering.”
Read the original article from WBBM News Radio.
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