Even if there are a few scrapes between them, John Reynolds insists his dogs are friendly. All 17 of them. All pit bulls.
“They were like best buddies,” Reynolds says of his father the 84-year-old Rev. John Reynolds and one of the pit bulls. “My dad would sit there and feed him off his spoon. They slept together.”
Reynolds says no one knew his dogs’ nature more than his father who owned the home and property where John raises the dogs.
Which makes what he found on Wednesday night, October 13th, even harder to understand.
“I could see that he’d been attacked by something,” Reynolds recalls.
He came home that night and found his father on the ground in the pen with severe bite marks. He did not survive the attack.
Why the subject line has a question mark:
He admits it’s only speculation, but Reynolds believes stray dogs or possibly even a mountain lion may have attacked his father and his pit bulls.
Full story here.

Remember, 17 poodles could do the same thing…
Goddamnit, David. Now Slog is going to be inundated by kooks who think mountain lions should be banned. PEOPLE: it’s not the breed.
no clicks for you, David.
Mountain lions are just house cats that like a nice tasty pit bull as a side dish.
@2 and 3, there will be NO bashing of my cousins on here. And pray when we have assimulated THEM into the collective!!! MEOW!!!!
Or a velociraptor … on a velocipede. Think outside the box, people!
I think mountain lions should be banned.
A mountain lion?
When you hear hoofbeats, don’t think zebras first thing.
or maybe it was the 17 pit bulls that killed him.
@6, we must duel. Yes, you heard me; I’m calling you out. If people like you aren’t stopped soon we will only be able to buy mountain lion chow at special state-run stores that are always closed on Tuesdays (mountain lion feast day, lilttle-known fact).
Nice Rorschach test. There’s zero evidence except for unspecified “bite marks” (we don’t even know how long the guy’s body was in the pen after he died). So you get to think exactly what you want to think about how it happened.
@6 if you take Fnarf up on that, bring a mallet.
Yes, yes, of course! A Mountain Lion bit that poor man, and he leapt, bleeding, into that pit bull pen FOR SAFETY.
Obv.
It’s really not that difficult to tell if someone was killed by a big cat.
can’t they tell by the marks and size of the bites? and it would seem if it was a mountain lion there would be lots of scratches and claw marks. and how about paw prints
People, people — correlation does not equal causation. This is just like all those ‘scientists’ who assume that just because the rise in global temperatures correlates to the increased concentrations of man-made greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, the two are somehow related.
What I’m trying to say is, I think sunspots killed this man.
Could have been a mad pack of bunnies! Why blame the pit bulls?
Because it was actually the Sheep.
If we start blaming them, then where will we get wool that flies?
At the very least, the pit bulls failed to defend their owner. What’s the point of having 17 pit bulls if they cower before a single mountain lion?
The CDC, AVMA, HSUS and ASPCA are not kooks.
Maybe, just maybe, it was really large ticks.
Well, HSUS are kooks. . . .
@19, pull it out, Elenchos. I’m joking.
And all 17 dogs sat by while their owner was attached by a stray/mountain-lion. Mmm-hmph! Right. *Consults crystal ball* I predict we will see these 17 pit bulls in the news in the future…
Mountain lions..in MISSOURI??!!
I it was a mountain lion, you would see a deep bite wound on the neck, and the vertebrae would be crushed.
If pit bulls, there would be multiple flesh wounds (I’ve never seen domestic dogs crush bone in maulings–coyotes, yes, dogs, no), mainly around the belly, groin, and arms.
I bet you anything this was a pack of dogs, and likely a few were not neutered.
Most pit bulls are fine–no more or less aggressive than any other terrier breed. However, get a few unaltered ones together and pit bulls and jack russell terriers can be extremely violent towards one another.