Mark Buehrle is doing all he can to adjust to his new surroundings in South Florida, but he’s already having to make a few adjustments.
According to the Miami Herald (via Yahoo!’s Big League Stew blog), the new Marlins pitcher will be forced to live outside of Miami-Dade County all because of one of the dogs he owned.
Miami-Dade County instituted a pit bull ban in 1989, and one of Buehrle’s dogs, “Slater,” falls under the ban. Slater is a Staffordshire terrier, but according to the Herald, the dog falls under the ban.
“It’s kind of ridiculous that because of the way a dog looks, people will ban it,” Buehrle told the paper. “Every kind of dog has good and bad, and that depends on the handlers. If you leave a dog outside all the time, it’ll be crazy. Slater would never do anything harmful.”
Buehrle is no stranger to making headlines when it comes to dogs, though. As Big League stew points out, Buehrle was an outspoken critic of Michael Vick last year.
The Marlins lefty admitted that he hoped Vick, who notoriously served jail time for his dogfighting ring, would get hurt.
“Everything you’ve done to these dogs, something bad needs to happen to these guys,” Buehrle said at the time.
It’s all good in the end for the Buehrle family and Slater, though. The new Marlin has settled in Broward County. That’s good news for the Marlins, too, considering Buehrle also indicated that he would not have signed with Miami if he were not able to find housing that would accept Slater.
