This is more depressing news, for a very young Schip who couldn't build up so many stories. 5 and 1/2 months, Schico died, he was on leash on a walk in a public square while we were looking for an outdoor cafe to have lunch on a Sunny Easter. A large black Cane Corso type dog along the road with no leash, no collar, and no muzzle (they are suppose to be required here for fighting dogs). At his early age he already was learning to be a therapy dog. He had helped 5 children learn not to afraid of dogs. People would stop us on the train or on the street and want to pet and talk to him, they would smile and look cute for them and let them pet him even they were not very gentle. He would let little kids pick him up and just put on a face of I can wait until you can let me down. One night at 10:00 PM we found a woman on a street corner sad and lost. When she stopped crying she asked me how to get where she was going and if she could pet Schico. I let her pet him and watched her slowly become more calm and in control of her life. Schico also was the sort of dog that could get shy dogs to play, he played rough with big dogs, and polite with small and young dogs. We took him to a puppy group and watched him try to put his head underneath a terrified Yorkie to show that was friendly and ready to play, eventually he the Yorkie did play and Schico would chase away other dogs that tried to play too rough. Schico would pull on my leash when I would drop something like my hat, he would say look at that. He would bark when anything new happened, but first he would see if I was paying attention, and if I acknowledged it he would quite down. He loved to cuddle and was very happy when we would come down to the floor and would roll around snuggle next to us. == == Gory detail below. There are no lesson to be learned, it is just one == those sad things that happen, if you don't want to read ugly things == don't read further. It helps me to write about what occurred to get == over it. == Taska (my girlfriend) and I were walking next to a little park looking at the cafes and trying to decide where we want to have Sunday brunch. Schico was running along side of us on his leash wearing his little halter. I felt the leash pull and looked down the street. There was a woman walking with her large black dog. She had a torn up blue nylon leash around her neck. The large black dog walked over to us looked like an 80-100 lbs black Cane Corso, the owner of this other dog tried to call her dog back, but it didn't listen. Shico walked straight up to the dog with his tail wagging happily and tried to sniff the Cane Corso's head, instead of sniffing Schico the other dog started chewing on Schico's neck. There was a snap, a short cry, and red blood started to drip on ground. Taska started screaming, the owner of the other dog grabbed the skin on the back of her dogs neck and telling her dog "no", and repeating "Oh my god," "stop," "get him away." One of the visually terrifying things about some fighting dogs is once they taste blood or switch into their fighting mode their eyes become bloodshot, so the dog really did have those glowing red eyes it looked almost like blood was pouring out of the eye sockets in addition to his mouth. I tried telling the dog "out" in a firm loud deep voice, but it had no effect. I was unwilling to touch get my hands near the dogs mouth, because I have lived with big dogs and no what they can do. Taska was more terrified of what was happening and tried to pull Schico from the other dogs mouth, about that time Schico's bowels gave out and he I could smell his feces. Schico stopped moving the woman managed to pull her dog away we were staring at Schico body on the sidewalk, people were looking at us a man came up and started yelling that someone needed to call the police, we were splattered in blood, the man told the woman to put the muzzle on her dog, but she only had a little worn out nylon strap not a real muzzle. Her dog saw Schico again and ran for him, the woman had no ability to hold the dog back. The second time the dog got to Schico he tore open his belly and there was a 3 foot pool of blood in middle of sidewalk and his intestines were dangling out. The owner of the other dog hit her dog in the face and yelled at it to get back and screamed at us to take our dog (or what was left of him away). I pulled the body by the leash and put it on the side of a short metal fence at the park. Taska sat down next to a tree, I could see she had a few punctures on her hands, but most of the blood was from Schico. People walked by and looked confused saw the puddle of blood and turned the other direction. People were staring from the other side of the street and one man was taking photographs. The Police arrived they made the woman and her dog go into a police car, a policeman said they were taking her dog and if she couldn't get it into the car quickly then he was going to kill it right there. We got taken to the hospital where they cleaned Taska's wounds gave her a Tetanus shot and X-Rayed her hands. They warned us that she would need to start rabies treatment if the police cannot tell us that the other dog had its vaccines. -- -R*S Berlin, Deutschland Robin * Slomkowski schipperke@s.rslomkow.org Schico, 26 Oct 2003 - 11 Apr 2004 http://schico.parts-unknown.com