Part of my job is writing celebrity obits and sending them out to the media with photos–I wrote this one up yesterday, but we had no photos of the fellow in our database, sadly:
Now, I loved my kitties and I miss them, but I suspect this poor moke had *lots *more issues than just his dog. Too sad.
Very sad. If I had been forced into such a situation the obit would have read “…cut down in a hail of gunfire after killing all the members of his condo board with an axe.” But there were a lot of options he obviously didn’t explore enough.
Man this world has gone to the dogs.
Well if you feel so strongly about it, Eve, you can Pit (bull) him.
He really was a fool for love thinking Rocco was all his children.
::wipes hands:: I think that should take care of most of the situational jokes in the thread. You’re welcome.
Couldn’t he have just moved?
Got it in one. There’s almost always an extensive back story to any extreme act such as murder or suicide.
I get a bit exasperated when “weird news” sites (News of the Weird, to take one eponymous example) publish incredulous accounts such as “Joe Dokes, 37, shot his brother Sam Dokes over a fight about the Showcase Showdown on the Price is Right.” I have no doubt in those cases that the recited triggering event was, in fact, true, but also little doubt, even when alcohol or other substances were involved, that there was a whole lot of history and pathology in the relationship that led up to the seemingly-trivial triggering event that, on the face, seems like a gross over-reaction but is almost certainly the (still irrational, but not ridiculous) culmination of a long series of troubled events.
Yeah, he was way messed up I’m guessing. Very sad.
:smack: .
Well it’s not unprecedented.
The linked story really choked me when I first read it. 
I have a very death-plagued office; hardly a coworker has not lost a parent or two and a pet in the past few years. Kate’s dog; Mel’s horse; Alison’s dog; my cats; and now Jesus’s and Barry’s pussies are ailing.
We’re all very sad and heartbroken (I am talking pets, now, not parents), but if you *kill *yourself . . . well. Issues. If you are not tough enough to deal with pets dying, don’t have pets.
I suspect there are not a lot of affordable apartments in New York that allow medium to large size dogs.
You have such a way with words.
Yeah, I’m guessing that was sort of an “I’ll show’em” move on his part. Sounds to me, based on the note, that he was pretty clearly making sure his blood was on their hands. But ISTM if you off yourself to prove a point you’ve got to be pretty unstable to begin with.
I’m sure it’s the word “hail” screwing me up here but I keep reading that as “hail of nail gun fire” which makes the whole sentence sound much different in my head.
It may be different there but and admittedly I only ran across this once but at one apartment complex (but it was the only complex I looked at) at they ONLY allowed dogs over 40 pounds. The reasoning behind that was that larger dogs tend to be quieter then smaller yappy dogs.
I love my dogs and I’m VERY aware of issues of prejudice against pit bulls – people can have a hard time finding housing that allows them – but the problem here is NOT that he killed himself over a dog.
Because you CAN find places to live with a pit bull.
If he wouldn’t move, he killed himself – and his dog – over a condo.
If pets are family – a view with which I am entirely sympathetic – and you can’t abandon them, then you move. Or make arrangements. You take care of those who matter to you – especially those who matter enough to be worth killing yourself over.
He bought the place for 450K and had mortgages for more than the purchase price. Affordable condos are not littering the streets of NYC, and finding another condo that he could afford and that would allow a pit that wasn’t grandfathered in like his was would be very difficult. It’s easy to find buildings that will take pocketbook dogs, larger breeds, not so much. Targeted breeds? Good luck.
Maybe he was being targeted. I’ve seen buildings hassle pet owners to the point where they were on the verge of a breakdown. If you don’t have the money to fight back, certain buildings and landlords have the art of hassling and harassing you down to an art form. Restrictions and fines can be out of control.
Maybe he didn’t have the money to fight back. I can see him being put upon enough to start thinking that putting his dog down would be the best option, and then after doing it, being so overcome by guilt that he couldn’t go on.
Maybe this was just one of many problems he had, but I can understand how he must have felt.
I don’t understand why he didn’t give the dog to a shelter/rescue organization/family/friend, etc.
Why didn’t he have it debarked?
It’s a very sad story, and I agree there’s a lot more going on. Sad.
This is a whoosh, right?
Because putting it to sleep would be less cruel.
I’m also in the “well, then, move” camp. I bought a house because I’d rescued my fourth pet and I knew I wouldn’t be finding any apartments that would be cool with that many critters. Do you suppose he just had to live in NYC? There wasn’t a single apartment in say, New Jersey, right across the river, that would allow for his dog? He could have sub-let the NYC place to subsidize his NJ rent. I bet there were a lot of options. So yeah, dude probably had more issues than National Geographic. I just feel sorry for the poor dog who had to die because its owner was too fucked up to work toward a better solution than offing them both.
Hell, these guys specialize in re-homing Pit Bulls and they’re on Long Island!
Well, not to excuse the man or anything, but from what you wrote it seems he was guilt-ridden because he had his dog killed for the convenience of others, not just that the pooch died.
And I read that obit long before I read this thread - that was you? Cool!