Haddonfield Family Featured on HBO Special

The Taffet family of Haddonfield will be featured in a HBO documentary premiering Monday at 9 p.m. entitled One Nation Under Dog: STORIES OF FEAR, LOSS & BETRAYAL.

The documentary looks at America's love and fear of dogs.

"Americans have always had a love affair with canines, but lost amidst the pampering are unpleasant truths about dog ownership, care and commerce," according to the HBO website. "ONE NATION UNDER DOG: STORIES OF FEAR, LOSS & BETRAYAL offers an eye-opening, three-part portrait of America’s complex relationship with dogs."

The story of the Taffet's four Rhodesian Ridgebacks is featured in the first episode. Dr. Robert Taffet spoke exclusively to Haddonfield Patch last April, hours before he euthanized Duke, one of his four Ridgebacks. The dogs were originally bred for lion hunting in Africa. Some of the Taffet's neighbors in the 100 block of Upland Way say they are scared of the dogs.

Duke had survived an incident in 2009 in which he tore the ear off of a three-year old girl at a Salem County farm the Taffets owned. The Taffets finally decided to destroy him last year after he bit a teenage girl visiting their Haddonfield home.

“It has to be done,” a grim-faced Taffet said then. “Nobody’s happy about it.”

The documentary follows the Taffets through several ordeals with neighbors that land them in court and finally into a vets office to euthanize one of their dogs.