Facebook updates from Margie Foley, a bulldog breeder in western Little Rock whose home was burned by an arsonist last week, brought me to tears this morning. Two of the dogs, Obie and Beebe, were too seriously burned for continuing treatment. They were trapped with other dogs in the kitchen when someone threw a container of gasoline through an open door and ignited it. Wrote Destiny Foley:
This is the very last picture that I took with these two just a few weeks ago. Obie thought it would be a good idea to hop up in the chair & sit on me. Bebe thought it would have been funny to follow Obie in his footsteps & also crawl on top of me the same time as Obie did. Never in a million years would I have thought my house would get broken into & lit on fire. I also never thought that my two babies would have left this world that way. I can’t even comprehend why anyone would want to hurt any type of animal. My heart is broken into several different pieces & it will never get patched up from this nightmare. Someone wake me up now…
No word yet on what may have been behind this crime. The Facebook page has an outpouring of sentiment from dog lovers the world over. It was an inexplicably cruel act for any living thing. But speaking as an owner of four English bulldogs and, currently, a Frenchified miniature version, it’s heightened by the universally gentle nature of the breed.
Margie Foley reported on Facebook on the other dogs: