KEARNEY, NE—In an effort to put the man’s behavior into context by describing it as part of an intergenerational cycle of violence, a psychologist stated Friday that local 38-year-old Todd Adelwright mostly likely abused his dog because he had been abused by the dog who owned him as a child. “Throughout Todd’s childhood, the only model he had for what an owner should be like was the dog who would lock him in the basement when he misbehaved or leave him chained up to a tree in the yard,” said therapist Paula Jantzen, explaining that when Adelwright was young, the Irish setter who owned him would come home late every night, stumbling in through the pet door and growling at the boy until he cried. “So is it any wonder that Todd, now an owner himself, does the same thing with his dog Duke? When Todd was young, he learned that most problems could be solved with a swat from a rolled-up newspaper. In fact, that’s how the dog who owned Todd potty-trained him. Because he grew up thinking all this was acceptable, Todd does the very same things today.” The psychologist added that much of Todd’s treatment of Duke could be explained by the fact his owner had regularly forced him to compete in underground child-fighting rings.
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