David Eason is defending his decision to shoot and kill his family’s French bulldog, Nugget, even after it set off a chain of events that would result in wife Jenelle Evans‘ firing from Teen Mom 2 and temporary loss of their children. In an interview Monday with PEOPLE Now, Eason stood by his choice to kill the family pet after it nipped at his 2-year-old daughter Ensley’s face.
“It was a situation where my daughter, her health, her safety was in danger,” Eason told the outlet. “This was something that nobody wants to ever have to do. The dog was aggressive. Yes, she might not be huge or whatever, but you know when a dog bites a child on the face more than one time, then it should never be around the child again.”
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“If you give the dog up for adoption, one day it’s going to be around children again,” he continued, claiming, “If you call the authorities at that point, the law says the dog has to be euthanized. I’m not going to pay anyone to euthanize my dog when I could do it myself.”
Getting emotional, Eason said it was tough for him to go through with it: “I mean, I loved that dog. I still think about her every day. It’s really hard for me. A lot of people put me down for it, they hate me for it, but like I said it was not something I wanted to do.”
Evans chimed in she hoped the “private family issue” wouldn’t have gotten out publicly.
“David has grown up in the country lifestyle — he hunts, he fishes. The way he was raised is really different than a lot of other places. We understand that people are scared of the whole gun thing, [but] they just don’t understand it from David’s perspective,” Evans said. “His father taught him, ‘Don’t let any animal hurt you’ … and he just thought what he was doing was best.”
In the aftermath, Evans said of her husband, “He does realize that what he did was wrong. And he does realize that he shouldn’t have done it. And he said, ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t realize how bad it was going to hurt everyone.’”
But Eason stood by choosing not to re-home the dog, saying, “I don’t think the dog should have been re-homed, no. Regardless of what I did, the dog would have been euthanized. … The law says if you don’t euthanize a dog that bites somebody, within a reasonable amount of time, you are held liable for neglect.”
Evans added that the problem came when “instead of conversating [sic] with me before it happened, he just did it.”
“He didn’t realize how big that was going to be if it did get out. He also isn’t used to social media or being on TV or anything like that,” she explained. “I’ve been around it since 2009. I know my actions from the past have made me learn not to do those mistakes again. David is learning from everything that is happening.”
The couple has since gone to counseling as they worked to get their children back via the court battle determining their fitness as parents.
“I have [forgiven him], and we went to co-parenting counseling sessions — it’s kind of like a marriage session in one,” Evans admitted. “And he’s also taken anger management classes; he took six classes, completed the whole course. So I mean, he did do things to try to better himself. We’ve been working out really well ever since. We got over it.”
She even had a positive spin as to the whereabouts of the family’s other dog, Jax, whom fans have noticed has been missing from her social media.
“Actually, my pitbull Jax, he actually killed one of our pigs recently. So instead of David saying, ‘Well let me euthanize the dog, let’s just give the dog away,’” she explained. “So we gave the dog away instead … So he’s even taken the initiative to correct his actions and not repeat the same mistakes he’s made before.”
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