Fulton County Animal Services

Pit bulls are probably the most misunderstood breed of dogs today. Dog fighters love to abuse them, but in the right hands they can be loving, people-friendly pets. Abused pit bulls pose the biggest challenge.

When Barking Hound Village Foundation took over management of Fulton County Animal Services earlier this year, a new director was brought on board. Jere Alexander says pit bulls are her favorite breed.
She even has an on-line website, http://www.pitarchive.org/ which was taken down shortly after she became aware of our investigation. She calls it a research site, with information about the history of dog fighting and the pit bull breed itself. She says it was taken down for maintenance, not because of our investigation. Although Ms. Alexander says she has done “field work” in the area of dog fighting, she condemns the practice.

Critics claim Ms. Alexander put dogs at risk when she took control of the shelter, a claim she denies. The current and former employees tell the I-Team she routinely looked the other way when her favorite breed went on the attack. They insist she refused to euthanize obviously aggressive pit bulls. Those pits, in turn, attacked other dogs in the pens. Insiders claim dog attacks and deaths inside the shelter have risen dramatically since Barking Hound Village Foundation took over. The management there tells us they don’t keep such statistics.

Our investigation digs up what really happened when a vicious dog ticket mysteriously disappeared a few months ago. That dog was a pit bull. We explore why Ms. Alexander had her own pit bulls chained on her property multiple times, in violation of DeKalb County’s anti-chaining ordinance. We also reveal just how easy it was for an undercover I-Team producer to be approved to adopt an aggressive pit bull from the Fulton County Animal Shelter, even though he made a point of telling everyone at the shelter he hadn’t even bothered to take the dog out of the cage.

The investigations airs Thursday and Friday at 6 and 10 pm. I’m sure we’ll be airing follow-up stories as well.

http://community.myfoxatlanta.com/blogs/RandyTravis/2008/10/29/Fulton_County_Animal_Services