Much ado about nothing?

I normally don't look at the comment posted on my stories that are on our website, but something told me to look at my story on the woman accused of breaking into the Mahoning County Dog Pound.

I was stunned. I have never had that many comments on anything I have ever written, which makes me wonder, once again: Where are our priorities?

In a nutshell, Kate Shearer, an Austintown woman, had a preliminary hearing in Youngstown Municipal Court on a charge of breaking and entering after she was caught smuggling a pit bull puppy out of the Mahoning County Dog Pound.

As I wrote after the man who let his dogs die in his East Side kennell, people care when its animals involved, but they never pay attention when its a person -- unless it's someone they know.

Indeed, when I told a cop I know where I was headed with a camera Friday, he shook his head.``Nobody cares when 10 people get shot,' he said, and to some degree, he's right. When I covered the Michael Davis case, the man accused of killing an entire family, we got nowhere near the comments as this dog story.

Some of the people think the authorities should let bygones be bygones and let this poor woman go because she was trying to save a dog's life. But cops don't like it much when someone gets in a secure area and takes something. That's why she's charged.

And although I like puppies as much as the next person, and I want nothing bad to happen to them, even pit bulls, there is a reason why they are banned by some communities. I've been on several ridealongs with police, and when we go to an abandoned house with a stash of drugs and weapons inside guarded by dogs, we are not greeted by poodles or cocker spaniels.

If Shearer is guilty, I do not know, but if she was thinking she could get away with this with a slap on the wrist, she's wrong. No one was laughing in court.

But people seem to care. At least about animals. Which means I'll be following it as closely as possible.