Tampa Bay Buccaneers’ defensive tackle Rakeem Nunez-Roches has come under the spotlight for abandoning his dog because his wife was “expecting a baby.” Nunez-Roches had allegedly abandoned the Cane Corso on the side of a busy rural Hillsborough County road in Florida. The dog, Jitterbug, sat on the road for almost 36 hours, tired and hungry, before an animal rescue group took the dog to a shelter on December 8. Cane Corsos are a form of pit bull. The dog was also found to be missing some teeth. It also appears the Tampa Bay Buccaneers’ player is also a dog-breeder, reported TMZ.
Marianna Montague, a volunteer with Cane Corso Rescue, was the one informed about the abandoned dog. “They said this is what looks to be a Cane Corso. She’s been out on the lam in the same exact spot for 24 to 36 hours. Several people have stopped to try to get her to come into their car but she growled, barked, was somewhat charging and aggressive,” said Montague. She added that the dog was found tired. “The University of Florida, they have a research facility that’s about eight miles up in Wimauma. The dog was sitting in a median at the entrance to the University,” added Montague.
Montague took the dog to the Hillsborough County Animal Services and found that the dog had been registered to Tampa Bay Buccaneers defensive tackle Rakeem Nunez-Roches’s name and its name was Jitterbug. Turns out Nunez-Roches is also a dog breeder. When one of the officials at the Hillsborough County animal rescue shelter contacted Nunez-Roches, he promised to come and collect her. “He had responded back that he would pick her up on Sunday, which I thought was odd because they played Detroit on Sunday and they had a 4:25 game, so how would he get back in time to pick her up at 7? Was football more important? Maybe it is, but he should’ve re-homed her,” said the official, who had contacted the player. Nunez-Roches never came to pick up the dog and Cane Corso remained with the shelter. The Hillsborough County animal rescue shelter wants answers from the player for abandoning the dog by the road. Nunez-Roches is yet to respond to the matter. “I don’t know whether it got loose, whether they let it go, whether it was in boarding and it got loose, I don’t know,” said Montague. “All I know is it was on the lam for longer than it should’ve been in a place it shouldn’t have been and that it stayed at the shelter what, three weeks now?”
Rakeem Nunez-Roches claimed the dog was his no more without elaborating any further on the matter. “We love and have taken care of dogs for years, but because a few overzealous people mistakenly assumed we had abandoned a dog that was no longer ours, we have received threats and had our reputations smeared in the media,” said Nunez-Roches, according to Bleacher Report.
Tampa Bay Buccaneers confirmed they were investigating the incident. “We are aware of the issue regarding Rakeem Nunez-Roches and are in the process of gathering additional information. We will refrain from further comment until we have a better understanding of the situation.” The dog was pre-adopted and has found a new home with Keith Johnson and his wife, Andrea. Of course, we wanted her more. We wanted to make sure that she felt safe and she felt loved,” said Andrea, according to BayNews9. “And we heard different things before about the people who owned her before are breeders and they had other dogs that they bred to and we have a soft spot for the Cane Corsos and she’s around the same age as our Cane Corso.”