Obedience School For You!

Always smirky Paula Wade comes through again in this story in today's Commercial Appeal about the Cookeville dog shooting.

But the goober who wrote the story's headline needs to be smacked with a rolled-up newspaper: "Howls of outrage after shooting of dog have town covering its ears."

The story itself is a sympathetic look at Cookeville's reaction to all the bad press they've been getting. As in: long on Cookeville sympathy and short of Smoak sympathy. The story makes repeated references to the angry and dangerous calls being made to various residents, including the officer who shot the dog.

But it fails to mention that the officer, Eric Hall, had two prior shooting incidents involving dogs. It also condenses the elaborations of dispatchers, which turned a routine traffic call into a felony stop, this way:

A series of miscommunications by dispatchers led THP officials to stop the Smoaks on a "felony stop," assuming the family had been involved in a robbery.

Two other items of interest:

Cookeville Police Chief Robert Terry ...said Humane Society officials have offered to provide training for Cookeville's 69 police officers on handling animals.

Notice he doesn't say they've accepted, though. And there's this from Cookeville City Manager Jim Shipley:

But I think the biggest cure will be time...

As in, after a while it'll all blow over and you'll forget and we can go back to what we were doing before.

Nope, nothing to see here. Just keep moving on.