Diggy the smiling rescue dog might lose his happy new home if he’s part pit bull
When Michigan musician Dan Tillery saw that broad grin he had the same reaction others did.
Awwwww.
The grin belonged to Diggy, a stray dog that needed a home.
So Tillery took Diggy home. But their happy story didn’t end there.
Waterford Township in Michigan, where Tillery lives, has banned pit bulls for years. And Diggy, say township police, looks like a pit bull.
A photo of Diggy with Tillery, both of them grinning, went viral on Facebook in recent days as people celebrated with them. But when residents of the township saw the dog they called the police.
Several complained that Diggy looked like a pit bull. So police went to Tillery’s house.
“Based on their observations, it was determined the dog was part pit bull/pit bull terrier,” Waterford police chief Scott Underwood said in a statement.
According to an ordinance in effect for more than 20 years, any part of Diggy that is part bull makes him illegal in the township, where the law is “zero tolerance” against pit bulls.
Detroit Dog Rescue, the only no-kill shelter in the city, got Diggy from animal control, which picked him up off the streets as a stray, the TV station reported.
The rescue folks named him Sir Wiggleton.
“He had a sparkle in his eye that he needed to get out,” Kristina Rinaldi, Detroit Dog Rescue executive director, told The Detroit News. “I definitely did not want to see him euthanized.”
So the group posted a picture of smiley Sir Wiggleton on its Facebook page in late May and he attracted immediate attention. Tillery and his longtime girlfriend adopted him last week.
“Diggy is an American Bulldog and all of his paperwork says so,” Kristina Rinaldi, executive director of Detroit Dog Rescue, told the Detroit Free Press. “Diggy is a great dog.”
Waterford Township Police Lt. Todd Hasselbach told the Detroit News that Tillery simply needs to provide veterinary proof of the dog’s breed.
“I’m looking at a picture of this dog and it looks like a pit to me. I’d write a ticket,” Hasselbach said.
“(Tillery) can fight it. We’ve issued tickets before for dogs that looked like a pit, and then (owners) have brought in papers later that shows that it’s not a pit. And we’ve dismissed the ticket.
“If he can show that it’s not (a pit bull), then it’ll be fine. He just has to keep those papers on him because his neighbors are gonna keep calling.”
Absent of the proof, police gave Tillery until Monday to relocate Diggy or face a $500 fine, WXYZ reported.
The Free Press reports that the township ticketed Tillery on Monday when he went to the police department to follow up with officers who visited his home last week.
“We have the paperwork that says it’s an American Bulldog. I told (one of the officers) that I was going to keep my dog and he gave me a citation,” Tillery told the Free Press.
More than 56,000 people have signed an online petition to get Waterford to lift its dangerous dog ban. Only 2,400 of those signatures came from the township itself.
“This ordinance has been in place for many years. Many families have had to give up their family pets due to this law,” the petition reads.
“It is important for all of us to come together and be a voice for not only Diggy the American Bulldog, but all of the pets and people that have suffered heartache in the past years.
“We must remember, it is not the animal that is the beast, it is man that creates the beast. Aggressive dogs come in all shapes, sizes, and BREEDS. This should be handled on a case by case basis.”
This story was originally published June 13, 2016 at 4:55 PM with the headline "Diggy the smiling rescue dog might lose his happy new home if he’s part pit bull."