Dog day care owner issues apology after alleged abuse video goes viral

A Northeast Ohio dog day care is facing scrutiny after its owner was allegedly caught on camera abusing a dog.

The video shows a dog having his head pinned to the floor by Amy Beach, owner of Tails R Waggin in Tallmadge, and it has gone viral.

The video shows Beach walking a Doberman.

Next Leo, an 18-month-old pit bull, is let into a play area. He begins to roughneck with the bigger dog.

Leo’s owner Mike La Salvia described what he saw.

“That’s what they do, they play but when she approaches him, yells he you know gave himself up. I mean even when she choked him, he could have tried to bite or something,” Salvia said.

The alleged incident was shared on Facebook:

Mike was vacationing in Mexico and checked the video feed from Tails R Waggin. What he saw ruined his vacation. He was helpless to do much about it.

Later in the video Leo is dragged toward another door and pushed out of the play area and into another room. Beach used her foot.

Mike still has a nagging question.

He wants to know what happened, if anything, out of camera range.

He also has this advice, “You wanna make sure there’s cameras in every room,” Salvia added.

The video appears to show Beach dragging the dog out of the day care room.

Clients who board their pets with Tails R Waggin,an independently-owned franchise, can watch the day care space via live camera stream.

The operators at the North Canton Tails R Waggin location emphasized on Facebook that the incident occurred at the Tallmadge day care, which is not operated by the same owners as the North Canton location.

They released a statement regarding the incident:

Beach offered the following comment in response to the incident through her attorney, Gerry Chattman:

The video clip now circulating on the internet of an incident that occurred in our Tallmadge location shows me handling a dog roughly.

I agree that the video itself, viewed without context, is very disturbing. I want my fellow dog-lovers to know the rest of the story directly from me.

At the beginning of the video, as I let the pit bull out into the common area, it immediately approached another dog’s back. The pit bull’s hair was standing up and he was low-growling – three very distinct signs of an impending attack. It was at that very moment that I made a split-second decision to subdue the pit bull for the protection of myself and the two dogs. In the emotion of the moment, I was scared and reacted instinctively.

I have worked with dogs for 9 years and I have seen the horrific damage a dog-on-dog attack can cause, and I moved quickly to shut-down that possibility.

I can’t begin to tell you how sorry I am for the heartache this has caused the pit bull’s owner and family, as well as our clients.

I just feel awful about what happened.