While a story about an abused child might not be as interesting to the readers, the Philadelphia Inquirer has a long article about a severely abused dog named Oreo. Described as a "pit bull mix," she had been severely beaten (badly enough that a fellow project resident called the cops) and finally thrown from the roof by her lovely 19 year old owner -- who will probably be barred from owning animals when he is paroled, but who will of course always be allowed to father as many children as biology permits.

NEW YORK - Oreo was called a miracle dog when she was thrown off the roof of a six-story Brooklyn building this summer and survived.

But nearly four months later, the 1-year-old brown-and-white pit bull mix growled and lunged at people gathered in a playroom to see her, then turned and lunged at a female handler who had pulled back furiously on the 62-pound dog's heavy leash.

After months of working to rehabilitate Oreo, the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals said it had determined she is too dangerous to ever be placed in a home or even to live among other dogs.

The organization said it plans to euthanize her Friday.

"Everything we've tried to do for her has not worked," said Ed Sayres, the president and CEO of ASPCA. "And she has gotten more aggressive."

Sayres, a longtime proponent of "no-kill" shelters, said it's rare for the organization to euthanize an animal. He said 94 percent of the nearly 4,000 animals the organization takes in each year are placed in adoptive homes and the rest are euthanized because of medical or behavioral reasons.

"The measure of our success around here is lives saved," he said.

Indeed, it was anybody's guess whether Oreo could be saved when she arrived at the ASPCA's Bergh Memorial Animal Hospital.

The organization said it received a complaint on June 18 that a dog had been beaten on the third floor of a housing project on West Ninth Street in Brooklyn, and then a second call saying that the same dog had been thrown from a roof. She was found with two broken legs and a fractured rib.

Fabian Henderson, a 19-year-old who lived at the complex in the borough's Red Hook section, was arrested in July on felony charges, according to the ASPCA.

He pleaded guilty Oct. 20 to aggravated cruelty to animals and was released on his own recognizance pending sentencing on Dec. 1, court records show.

There was no phone listing for Henderson at the Brooklyn building. His lawyer could not immediately be reached for comment.

After Oreo was brought to the ASPCA, surgeons reassembled the dog's front legs and she recuperated well enough to walk. But during a behavioral evaluation in July, she began to display aggression "with little provocation and little warning."

"The staff should not lean over her or make direct, sustained eye contact," the evaluator's report said.

In further tests, she growled at strangers and bit an evaluation tool called an Assess-A-Hand , which looks like a mannequin's arm on a stick , multiple times. She barked and lunged at another dog at a 5-foot distance.

I will never forget a conversation with an animal control officer in Berkeley who told me about an incident in which a pit bull (pre-screened for its gentle disposition) was adopted by a family they didn't know had a budding young psychopath of a son who proceeded to beat the dog with a baseball bat. Eventually, the dog turned on him, inflicting severe injuries on the boy. Naturally, the dog had to be put to sleep, the family got a lawyer, and sued the city. As the basic operating principle of society is that nothing is anyone's fault but all injuries must be handsomely compensated, the vicious kid's family got a nice settlement.

Abused kids also grow up to be vicious, but it's not as interesting to the public. (Check out the number of stories about Oreo, the dog thrown from the Brooklyn roof. The story was covered repeatedly in the New York Post, the New York Daily News, and eventually made MSNBC, the New York Times, the Huffington Post, and now Classical Values!)

Now, while I hate to be judgmental except as a form of satire, I must admit to a strong suspicion that the mother of the guy who threw the dog off the roof did not do the greatest job of supervising what was going on in the family home:

Henderson's mother, Samantha Henderson, 41, told the Daily News Friday she's never seen the dog before and doesn't believe her son did it.

"I was surprised that he got arrested for that," she said, noting the family has a pit bull mix named Diamond. "He's basically a quiet person, good with animals."

But an ASPCA investigation revealed numerous witnesses saw Henderson toss Oreo off the roof, Pentangelo said.

After Henderson was arrested, he admitted he'd done it but refused to explain why, sources said. Henderson later changed his story and said the dog jumped, sources said.

Henderson's mother's claim that she has never seen Oreo before conflicts with a June 6 incident in which Henderson was arrested. A city housing cop spotted him walking an unleashed dog fitting Oreo's description, law enforcement sources said.

The officer collared Henderson after learning there was an unspecified warrant out for his arrest, the sources said.

Interestingly, at the New York Times blog, commenters are trying to politicize the issue by insisting that young Mr. Henderson has to be a Republican. With all respect to their keen powers of insight, I'll stick my neck out again and express my doubts about that too.

But hey, if he does turn out to be a Republican, I'll still feel the same way about him. Whether they are Republicans or Democrats, people who abuse dogs and throw them off buildings are psychopaths who will probably do the same thing to people sooner or later. And if they have children, in all likelihood their children will be vicious too.

But they will be less interesting to society than vicious dogs.