On one hand, I am happy that Tobias got the help that he needed, but at the same time, I have a real tugging on my heartstrings because I was in the owners shoes…TWICE.

I volunteer at a Humane society many times a week, and about four or five years ago, we got a giant rottweiler by the name of Ursula tied up and abandoned on the front fence of the shelter. She was a pretty girl, but very underfed and absolutely huge in height. She stayed in the shelter for six monthes, and no one even took her out of the kennel for pre adoption socialization, so I made it my mission to see her get adopted.

Another three months passed, and still no one wanted her. I was called into the coordinator’s office for “The Meeting”. We had to decide whether any of us could foster her, or if she would have to be put down because she was unadoptable. I told the coordinator that even though I wasn’t working full time at that time, I would take her in. He didn’t like the idea, but at the word of some of the other volunteers, and my promising that she would be well cared for or I would give her up without a fight, he let me have her the next night, after she underwent a full vet physical.

Ursula and I did very well together and she responded wonderfully to the training the two of us did, but as she stayed with me, she started gaining weight. Fearing that she would be taken away from me, I took her in for another physical, and the vet told me that she was fine, just to get her some more exercise. I talked with some people at my church, and finally found a teenager who would be willing to come over while I was at work, and play with ‘my baby’.

That was in March, by june, she had still not seemed to be losing any weight, and looked a little more rounded. I thought maybe she was pregnant or something, so took her in for one more physical, still nothing wrong, and she seemed perfectly healthy without the warning signs for any of the common problems with overweight dogs. We went home and got back to our lives.

The very next week, I came home from work, and there was my dogsitter sitting on my doorstep with an empty leash in his hand. I asked what happened and he told me that animal control had stopped him and confiscated the dog for animal abuse, and had given him a summons for me to appear in court if I wanted my dog back.

I showed up at court and took a very serious tongue lashing from a judge who seemed to be on the side of the animal control officer, saying I had mistreated my dog by letting her get so overweight, even after I provided the court with my detailed vet records. He even went so far as to say that my vet wasn’t qualified to assess Ursula’s condition, because the state appointed vet told him that she was morbidly obese and suffering from the early stages of knee and hip problems.

Needless to say, I did get Ursula back, after much jumping through legal hoops and about 2000 dollars later we were allowed to go home. I kept her for the rest of her natural life, and she died healthy and happy about a year and a half ago.

The second time I went through it was with a fat rescued rott named Roscoe. This one doesn’t end so happily, as after a long legal battle, I lost my little man to the system. It seems that in my care I never got the bloodwork done to find out if he had a hormone problem, and so when animal control got a report from one of my neighbors, and they came to check up on me since I was still on record or something as an animal abuser…I don’t know…They found him in his kennel, which I had to put him in since he had the habit of getting his chubby self up and over the fences in my yard and would go on ‘tours’, they left me a notice telling me to once again appear in court. This time I lost because I did not provide him with adequate care, and now I am on probation from working at the shelter, or adopting, keeping, or fostering animals for the next 5 years.

According to the newspaper article Amiie Gabrilska, led senior human officer ORDERED her to take the dog to animal weight loss or she would be fined and the dog might be confiscated.

We don’t know if this women has depression or what ugly things might have caused it if she does. A lot of people have depression & they sure don’t need people telling the world they have it. I have a freind who when under great stress or something bad happens she laughs & can’t stop laughing. When she had to put her dog to sleep she laughed all the way with tears comming down her face. No she does not have depression, she is a collage grad., great wife, mother & grandmother. If you have a team going she is one women you want on it because she is a great worker, wise person & always their to do more than her share. All medical people should have been taught in school that people react differently under stress. If taking you dog away from you isn’t stress I don’t know what is, maybe having to get $1,200 you don’t have is stress too.

This AC has given 319 compliance orders in 2006. I sure would like to see what kind they were. I don’t know how big Lacrosse Wisconsin is but I didn’t see anything on tv about them getting any dog fighting or bad abuse cases. I can’t help but wonder how many of these where pets.

The paper says Fawn Lunde insisted on a blood test & she paid for it herself because the dog weight wasn’t changing. The vet tech gave her the results, not the vet.. After going there once a week for 5 months & paying $1200 the very least the vet could do was face her with the results & tell her he or she was sorry. This does not supprize me, I went thou a lot of vets before I found the one I trusted & liked. Some places the vet techs do all the work & your lucky if you get to spend 2 minutes with a vet.

I read all of your posts & the 55 in the article. I think Faun is pretty for a 45 year women. I’m skinny now & trying to gain weight because I think any older women looks better with a little bit of weight on them instead of their skin hanging on them like me. At 45 she is still young but is either close or has had change of life & when that happens some where on most womens bodies there will be some weight, mine is the belly & I only weigh 98 #.

Sorry Straybaby, I like & respect you a lot but I have to disagree with you on this one. Imo Tobias & Faun love & like each other very much. Tobias is a hound breed that is the way their faces look. My Sparky is half basset & his face is very stoic & eyes look like sad puppy dog eyes. His tail may be going 100 miles an hour & be running around having fun but his face always stays the same. If Tobias didn’t love Faun he would not be staying with her outside, he would be smelling every blade of grass in the yard. Inside my Sparky is right beside me outside he wants to smell everything & anything & if he could he would love to track. I don’t think she is big enough of a women to hold him back if he didn’t love her.

I read the posts in the paper & most thought she should sue. A couple where her friends & liked her & felt bad for her. 2 posts said about a black lab on another street that was fatter than Tobias. Other lived around there & some know all about the AC officer & didn’t like her. Imo the few who thought AC was ok didn’t seem to live around there.

I don’t know about you all but I see fat dogs & cats everywhere including the vets. I have never heard of a vet or anyone else turning in a fat animal.

They didn’t say anything about weather Tobias has been to the vet before but I bet he has. Imo the AC officer(don’t want to respect her enough to use name) would have defended herself by saying she was fined for not having rabbies shots.

How much food did she have to buy from the vet? How much weight did he gain while under care of a vet for 5 months? What did it do to his health while having Fawn “drasticly reduce” his diet because they didn’t believe her? What did it do to Tobias & Fawn’s health being scard they where going to take Tobias & proberly kill him? Did anybody care what Tobias’s wanted? I don’t think Tobias would be adopted if they can’t even get all the puppys adopted. I bet Tobias would like to tell them to go to he!!. I want to stay with my mom, leave us alone, you are causing us pain, you are taking our momey. I don’t want to die even if you think it is for my own good. I love my mom.

Yes I use the word kill because that is what they do even if they say it is for there own good. It is kill shelters & no Kill shelters. Imo the word humane should be against the law for a kill shelter & AC (dog catcher) to use. The tv makes Ac look good to get peoples money but we all know it is not that way in most places. The money should go to FREE S/N to low income people & catch & release imo.

I’m sorry it is a long post but I feel really bad for both of them & don’t think they are being treated right at all. Humane means just that not scaring the hell out of you for months. This sounds to me just as bad as the ac officer (dog catcher) that took that poor old cat off of it’s property. It was killed too.

Fawn if you are reading this & need help I will call every lawyer within 500 milles around you to see if you can get help. I don’t live close to you but I sure can talk & use the phone. Just post some where on Itchmo or leave a pm, I’ll find it. This is suppose to be America the land of the free.

1 A Bloodhound according to AKC weighs 80-110 pounds. This dog weighed 197 before losing 9 pounds.

2 Owner felt “pressured” to sign up for the veterinarian’s weight loss program. Am I to understand that the veterinarian would even suggest this program [at a purported cost of $1200] BEFORE running bloodwork [e.g., thyroid tests]?

3 A licensed social worker has time to accompany someone to weekly weigh-ins at a veterinary clinic? It’s been my perception that social workers are stretched to the max. One wonders if this was indeed a licensed clinical social worker who gave the news media information. I really wonder if someone is misrepresenting herself as a social worker……the clue lies in the mention of PTSD, a diagnosis which a REAL LCSW would know is highly uncommon.

4 If in fact the individual in 3 above was a licensed clinical social worker, she should be stripped of her license for violating patient confidentiality. Even if the pet owner gave the “LCSW” permission to speak on the pet owner’s behalf, I seriously doubt the County’s legal department would consent to such an action.

5 If you read all the comments in the original publication link, you will see that a lot of Fawn’s friends come to her support. [Uh, where were they before?]

http://www.lacrossetribune.com.....tdog11.txt

6 A “Gunderson Lutheran doctor” claims the dog is medically necessary? What kind of doctor is this?

7 Why is it we’ve heard nothing from the 619 other owners to whom the Humane Society sent notices to?

8 How did the shelter learn of the problem? Someone had to have called and reported it.

Yes, I vote Tobias visit poster “NH” for a while. The combination of Synthroid, good eating habits, and REGULAR EXERCISE should get Tobias in shape soon.

Gindy, it was my cardiologist friend who pointed out that the pet owner’s hips were very pronounced.

i personally do not like too much *official* intervention (i don’t vaccinate, don’t use preventive and feed raw, lol!~). but if we keep in mind there is actually a scale they judge animals on for weight when looking at abuse cases, it’s a bit different. my dog was about a 1.5 in the weight category (15-20lbs under weight on a 45-50 avg dog) when she came in. that same scale goes into the overweight and obese ranges also. overweight is one thing, a dog (animal) weighing almost twice as much as it should is a whole ‘nother issue. there are no laws about applying preventive, vaccines except rabies etc. or about wearing dog jackets, BUT if said dog is in backyard with temps below freezing with no shelter or jacket, there is a law.

i agree the AC officer overstepped on the financial records, but i’m not ready to make the person out as some kind of meddling monster. could have been something that came up in the discussion. we have no idea what brought the request on and the social workers comments allude to distress on the owners part so it could be a partial misunderstanding. and yes the social worker should have kept her mouth shut, but she did add interesting info. sounds like she may also have a complex as a type of champion.

hopefully Tobias will continue with his weight loss and will have a nice long life with Lunde.

What’s not good is that a) the social worker who accompanied Lunde and Tobias to the “weight control” appointments violated Lunde’s privacy by speaking to the media about Lunde’s medical conditions and b) the animal control person (or persons, but I suspect this is the work of an individual with a messianic complex the size of alaska) who asked to see Lunde’s financial records overstepped their authority in a big way. VERY few agencies have the right to examine your personal finances, and animal control certainly is NOT one of them. If I were Lunde, I would file a complaint with the state’s attorney general about that. While it’s probably not strictly illegal for someone to request your financials, for a civil servant that has no authority to examine such records to pretend that they do should not be tolerated. A spanking is in order.

And that social worker needs a spanking too.

A lot of people have commented that obesity is a serious medical condition and that if an animal is overweight it’s being abused. Ok, let’s just presume that’s true. But exactly where is the line going to be drawn on enforcement of a specific standard of care? Is a pet being abused if its teeth need cleaning? Dental problems are related to a number of serious medical conditions. If someone finds a tick on your dog, is that evidence of abuse? After all, tick-borne pathogens can lead to quite serious medical conditions too. If you don’t put a coat on your dog when you walk him (or her) on a cold day, are you abusing the animal? He might catch cold, you know. If you give your dog a bite of your grilled cheese sandwich, is that abuse? A vet would probably tell you it’s bad for him. If you don’t brush your pet every day… abuse? If you speak sharply to your dog when he misbehaves, is that abuse? If you let your dog go swimming without a life preserver… abuse?

The question is, how much intervention is appropriate? Something about this story just smells rotten to me. It has the whiff of vendetta about it, and I think that Tobias is a pawn in a very dangerous game of tin pot dictatorship.

Are we going to have the “obese police” now? Are we as a society really going to let agencies determine everything we eat? Are doughnuts going to become a controlled substance?

Meanwhile, it’s perfectly ok for agribusinesses and other manufacturers to poison every last one of us in every way imaginable.

If I thought that only physically fit people should have dogs I would have said so. But I did not. So don’t twist my words.

My comments are NOT judgmental and discriminatory - read them again. What I said was,

“Another thing - and please don’t think I am being catty or insensitive: the human in the picture looks as though she might be morbidly obese as well. Ever notice “like human parent, like pet”? While there may well be a thyroid problem, there may also be a “food is love” problem, too.”

And in a later posting, after I scratched the word “morbidly” I added, “….my hypothesis that very obese humans often have obese pets.”

Like it or not, that’s been my observation for years and I will not recant it. This does not mean I am insensitive to the woman or her problems.

With respect to your comment to Straybaby regarding your opinion that overfeeding should not be legislated: tell that to the cardiologists in this country. It is just as abusive to the body as starving it.

she could have gone to a reg vet, a vet nutritionist or this place more than likely, they just wanted the dog to receive professional care. i’m sure they had probably established that the dog in fact was NOT on a program, therefore they ordered it. same thing they do if the dog is out in the heat of the summer or dead of winter if a dog doesn’t have shelter. they are enforcing animal cruelty laws already on the books. aka BASIC care. generally they ask the owner a few questions, if it’s a health issue they ask about recent vet care. if you claim you’re working with a vet, they will ask to see paper work. it’s all rather elementary.

in all honesty, i would hope this 80 poundish weight gain came about VERY slowly and it wasn’t much of an issue when she was at her vet a year ago for an annual exam ;) i would hate to think that the owner didn’t notice a faster weight gain! fast weight gains are hard to miss (been there), just as they can be hard to slow down. but it’s not normal and does require a vet, especially if the owner isn’t over-feeding. i do understand there are many reasons for dogs/pets being under weight as i have dealt with many that visually scream cruelty case. and some were (not by me!). one of them is on the couch next to me. have also dealt with skinny from cancer, skinny senior related and just born skinny hyper he’ll put weight on when he matures and slows down :)

no, i don’t want or think everyone has to live up to everyone else’s standards, but we also just can’t turn our heads. i know a few people that have called in possible cruelty issues. the situations were checked out and the people received return calls to let them know the situations were under control. is that really so bad? other calls end up being the rescue of multiple animals out of horrendous situations. go figure.

and i don’t care what anyone says. that dog does not look happy. but the owner does and she obviously cares for her dog. but she may need some more support in her situation. and she should get it if she needs it.

You again dump all the blame on the owner - “she wasn’t forced. she “felt pressured”. Hmmm. Seems that to “order that Lunde have a diet analysis and weight loss plan done..” is pretty close to forced - not a mere friendly suggestion which this crazy lady misinterpreted into “pressure.” That order was inappropriate as the diet and weight loss plan weren’t the problem - which is what happens when uneducated people in a position of power make diagnoses based on observation. She should have required a physical exam - not treatment. No AC officer is qualified to determine treatment.

You have no evidence that the dog had not been seen by a vet prior to this. There are too many variables to accuse her of that. There might not have even been a reason for a blood panel when she took the dog to the vet. You have no idea how long the dog has been overweight - it might only be a matter of a few months. And it is quite obvious that the vets at the La Crosse Veterinary Clinic needed “more schooling.”

“what if this dog were as grossly underweight as it is overweight?” Again, same thing. It completely depends on the reason. Therefore, anyone with any brains would ask for vet records and if there were none, they would require a complete physical to determine the cause. Underweight dogs are not always underweight because the owners starve them. Old dogs lose weight due to liver or kidney problems, hyperthyroid animals lose weight because of their medical condition, or a host of many conditions. And regardless of treatment, they may never gain weight. Perhaps intervention is warranted - perhaps not. So again I say, it’s not up to you or AC to make a diagnosis based on appearance. This rush to jugement is something you should hope never happens to you. This is the United States, in case you’ve forgotten people are supposed to innocent until proven guilty.

Good point, but well behind the learning curve. Your rights are gone. You need to fight to get them back.

While no doubt well intended, there are way too many people who believe their views should be mandated and forced upon others. Therein lies the road to tyrrany. The moment people refuse to respect the right of others to do as they damn well please, they lose their OWN rights to do as THEY damn well please.

The moment a person says, I think my neighbor should do this, or not do that, they have abandoned a very large piece of their own freedom.

A picture is worth a thousand words. In spite of being fat, this pet is quite obviously well loved and happy. It is equally obvious this person derives some measure happiness and comfort in return. They’re going peacefully about their private affairs and are doing nothing to harm their neighbors. Leave them the hell alone!

Personally, I am not willing to surrender my liberty over a fat dog.

Let’s get a little focus here. If a pet food company murders this woman’s pet, she will be told it’s only worth fifty bucks because she could pick up another pet at the dog pound for that amount. On the other hand, she is willing to make huge sacrifices, at the expense of her own needs, paying thousands of dollars to care for her pet.

From the comments I’ve seen here, most of us would do the same. So, why are we willing to spend thousands of dollars to protect property valued in tens of dollars? Is it perhaps because there’s something wrong with the way our legal and judicial system values our property? Our rights?