By Elaine Furst For Dog Files

Mercedes, the final dog sitting on Broward County’s canine “death row“, was released to her owners Friday after the pit bull’s two year wait for freedom finally ended.

Mercedes’ trouble started in 2008 when she got loose in her Fort Lauderdale Victoria Park neighborhood and killed Stan Peter’s 10-year old cat, Slugger. Due to the county’s zero tolerance dangerous dog law which allowed for the euthanasia of a dog after one serious attack on a domestic animal, Mercedes was sentenced to death.

The county however, recently reversed the controversial law, but Mercedes remained jailed while her owners awaited a court decision in their lawsuit against the county. That came this week, when the 4th District Court of Appeal deemed Broward’s dangerous dog law unconstitutional because it conflicted with state law.

Mercedes’ owners, Brian Hoesch, 31, and his godfather, Ken Sladkin, 66, said they wanted the ruling — even though Broward had retreated from its original law — so that no other city or county would copy what Broward had done.

Slugger’s owners however, were devastated about the loss of the pet they’d had for 10 years, writing to county commissioners to ask that Mercedes, who they said “had the taste for blood,” never be given the opportunity to attack again. A witness said Slugger, who was declawed, was sleeping in a car port when Mercedes pounced.

“The ruling is wrong,” said Peters. “With Mercedes’ history, it’s going to happen again.”

Yet on Friday afternoon at the VCA Animal Hospital in Coconut Creek, Mercedes jumped in Hoesch’s and Sladkin’s car and headed off to Tampa, where they will live.??

Sladkin paid $22,000 to board Mercedes for the two years he fought for her life. His legal fees have yet to be calculated, his attorney, Jason Wandner, said.

Sladkin said he rescued Mercedes from a neighbor in Tampa who kept her locked in a cage at all times. The dog has a “hunt instinct,” Sladkin said, and cannot safely be around cats or small pets.

“And she’s wonderful with humans,” he said. “When she used to escape from the cage, where would she go? We’d find her at the elementary school playing with the kids.”?

Mercedes is not one of the dogs the community in Broward rallied around to get the dangerous dog law repealed. Those were not pit bulls. But as a pit bull, she is representative of the vast majority of Broward’s cases of dogs killing other people’s pets since the dog law passed.?

State law prohibits breed-specific dog laws.??

Broward’s generic dog law allowed the county to declare a dog dangerous and euthanize it after one serious attack or kill of a domestic animal. The county put 56 dogs to sleep under the law. Broward’s new law tracks state law closely, requiring two attacks on a domestic pet before a dog is declared dangerous, and then requiring a third attack, or failure to abide by the restrictions of the dangerous dog designation, before euthanasia.??

As for Mercedes though, she will start fresh, with no dangerous dog designation.??