I'm going to share a little introspection of mine. It has nothing to do with the Fila pup specifically, but it has to do with human nature and the things we keep hidden, and what we choose to dig up and expose to sunlight.
I understand the desire to offer staunch defense to the underdog. It's what we do. We see someone getting "jumped on," and we view it as bullying and want to rise to their defense. I am always impressed with the loyalty people show to one another, kind of like these dogs. With the internet being what it is, sometimes we become fast friends with people we have never met. But sadly, that also makes it very easy for people to hide a lot of epic badness.
I once rose to the defense of a gal in Michigan named Tonya. I met her via an online dog game we played together, sold her books and everything. I never met her in person. Her kennel name was Friefly, and she was into APBTs of course. This all happened several years ago and the resulting poopstorm was not really publicized except on the Pit Bull forums. There were, I think, only one or two local news articles about it. So what I'm going to talk about is from my own memory. I'm trying to confirm things via a friend. But there isn't a long paper trail. Forum threads got deleted, and online news articles expire. My Googlefu is not strong.
Anyway, I considered Tonya a friend. As stated, I never met her personally. She was involved in the show world, and seemed to be on the right path. Plus, she was just a very nice person. Tonya started out very well-intentioned, showed some dogs. She got a dog from Midnight Sun Kennels (aka SevenSins here) named Dawn. She got a dog from Miakoda kennels (Repo, can't remember his original name). She got more dogs from MSK. She bred a litter out of Dawn and a Caragan male named J.D. (Some of you know a pretty brindle boy named Ryker, owned by Amanda in MI? He came from that litter.) She had other breedings, dunno if they were accidental or not. Her population exploded, she went through some personal problems, and it didn't take long before she was in over her head.
Tonya had some dogs taken to A/C when her house was condemned. People stepped in to take them out of there, like the owner of the stud who sired Repo (Val P in WA). (I got to meet Repo at a show in TX, and he was a lovely dude.) It became publicly known, described in very colorful and damning terms, and the poop started flying. Anyway, at the time I was Tonya's stalwart defender. No way would she let her dogs live in poor conditions. Heck, she was showing her dogs! In her pictures, the dogs were beautiful and I was secretly envious of a few of them. I took all kinds of heat from those "people hiding behind their screens" on the forums for defending her, but I stuck by her side through the first wave.
Things settled down for a while, at least publicly, and then there was another seizure. Dogs ended up dying in the shelter. Some of the key players tried to save what they could, but there were casualties. Some of the dogs died in the shelter when they couldn't be released to anyone but their owner/co-owner. It was a mess. I was not a key player, just a "screen warrior," but I ended up feeling like a fool for insisting that nothing was wrong, quit bashing on my Tonya, people shouldn't judge, etc.
Anyway. To this day, I still cannot bash Tonya. And I am not bashing any of the people who were involved in that situation, because I figure everybody has their own conscience and demons to wrangle with. But there was a problem brewing, and all the denial in the world did not help these dogs. If there had been an earlier "outing" and intervention, maybe there would have been a happier outcome. From what I hear, Tonya is normal now and not drowning in dogs, which I am very happy to hear. The dogs that got out are in loving homes.
All I'm saying is, sometimes people being outed in public isn't necessarily a bad thing. It isn't necessarily dragging them through the mud. Sometimes its HELP they need, and maybe they don't even know it.
That is all. [engage lurk mode]