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Its wide-open mouth is frozen in time as if it died inside this tiny doghouse desperately gasping for air.
Stench wafts in layers around the house at 2513 Westmoor St., where the black rotting carcass of a Presa Canario dog discovered two weeks ago has yet to be removed from the side yard.
"It smells bad," says a neighbor who declines to give her name. "It smells real bad. Somebody needs to get over there and remove it."
When South Bend Animal Control supervisor Kim Lucas responded May 12 to a neighbor's phoned tip that dogs were alive in the abandoned home, she found two brindle Presas in the living room feeding off a dead third Presa.
"There's no way to tell how that dog died," Lucas says, "whether it starved to death or whether the other two killed it."
She adds that the two cannibalizing Presas were also found emaciated and likely survived on water that spilled from a broken pipe in the house.
The room, like the house, is overwhelmed with dog feces and trash.
"There were several empty dog food bags," Lucas says. "The basement -- wall-to-wall -- was covered with feces."
Lucas, along with police officers, then went outside for a look around the yard.
"We smelled the dog," she says of the Presa decomposing in the small igloo-style dog house under a tree in the side yard. "We didn't know it was there."
The carcass of the second Presa found dead on the property was still there Wednesday, decomposing and -- according to the Centers for Disease Control and Preventions website -- ripe to attract rats and mosquitoes carrying disease.
According to Lucas, the responsibility to remove the dead carcass from the grounds falls with the owner of the property.
The Lincoln Way West offices of Renew Inc., listed as owners of the property at 2513 Westmoor, were closed Wednesday afternoon. No one from the government-subsidized firm was available to comment on when, or if, the carcass would be removed.
Nobody can pinpoint exactly when Antone Murray, the last known occupant of the house and presumed owner of the Presas, left the premises and his four dogs behind.
Police searching the home recovered a shotgun along with shotgun shells.
Mail addressed to Murray, including one envelope from Renew Inc., sits in the mailbox.
Neighbors say it's been at least a month since he was last seen on the property, while one neighbor said, "He may have left with his girlfriend."
"We have no idea what happened to him," says Bill Sykes of the Michiana Animal Alliance, who pulled the two surviving Presas out of the house and relocated them to the South Bend Animal Control shelter, where they are currently being treated and fed.
Both dogs are extremely friendly. A reporter walking by their cage at the shelter was greeted with wagging tails and licks to the hand.
Stench wafts in layers around the house at 2513 Westmoor St., where the black rotting carcass of a Presa Canario dog discovered two weeks ago has yet to be removed from the side yard.
"It smells bad," says a neighbor who declines to give her name. "It smells real bad. Somebody needs to get over there and remove it."
When South Bend Animal Control supervisor Kim Lucas responded May 12 to a neighbor's phoned tip that dogs were alive in the abandoned home, she found two brindle Presas in the living room feeding off a dead third Presa.
"There's no way to tell how that dog died," Lucas says, "whether it starved to death or whether the other two killed it."
She adds that the two cannibalizing Presas were also found emaciated and likely survived on water that spilled from a broken pipe in the house.
The room, like the house, is overwhelmed with dog feces and trash.
"There were several empty dog food bags," Lucas says. "The basement -- wall-to-wall -- was covered with feces."
Lucas, along with police officers, then went outside for a look around the yard.
"We smelled the dog," she says of the Presa decomposing in the small igloo-style dog house under a tree in the side yard. "We didn't know it was there."
The carcass of the second Presa found dead on the property was still there Wednesday, decomposing and -- according to the Centers for Disease Control and Preventions website -- ripe to attract rats and mosquitoes carrying disease.
According to Lucas, the responsibility to remove the dead carcass from the grounds falls with the owner of the property.
The Lincoln Way West offices of Renew Inc., listed as owners of the property at 2513 Westmoor, were closed Wednesday afternoon. No one from the government-subsidized firm was available to comment on when, or if, the carcass would be removed.
Nobody can pinpoint exactly when Antone Murray, the last known occupant of the house and presumed owner of the Presas, left the premises and his four dogs behind.
Police searching the home recovered a shotgun along with shotgun shells.
Mail addressed to Murray, including one envelope from Renew Inc., sits in the mailbox.
Neighbors say it's been at least a month since he was last seen on the property, while one neighbor said, "He may have left with his girlfriend."
"We have no idea what happened to him," says Bill Sykes of the Michiana Animal Alliance, who pulled the two surviving Presas out of the house and relocated them to the South Bend Animal Control shelter, where they are currently being treated and fed.
Both dogs are extremely friendly. A reporter walking by their cage at the shelter was greeted with wagging tails and licks to the hand.
