A Dogfight in Haddonfield

Susanne covered a lot of big stories in her broadcasting career: Budd Dwyer’s suicide, the Amy Grossberg/Brian Peterson baby killing, the Myla Friedman and Thomas Capano murder trials. Then she met her husband and started having kids — they have three now, ranging in age from 11 to 15.

Bob Principato is a doctor, like Bob Taffet. In fact, the two men worked together for years at Cooper Hospital. When Principato, playing with his kids in the yard, saw Taffet walking his Ridgebacks one evening, he went over to say hi and pet them. One of the dogs — Rocky — growled. That’s how Principato told the story in court.

Bob Taffet tells it another way. “He didn’t put his hand out to them, you know?” he says, demonstrating the universal palm-up proffer. “He went at Rocky over his head. And Rocky jumped back and barked at him.” He sighs. “I wasn’t around too much then. I was working as an orthopedic surgeon.” He hasn’t done that regularly since a 450-pound patient fell off the operating table. “Everyone else moved away, so I caught him,” Taffet explains. “Blew a few disks. I had surgery, I got an infection, there were complications.” He was in the hospital for months. Then, a year ago, he got bucked by a goat he owns while he was checking its bite and broke two vertebrae, tore his hamstring, and re-tore the rotator cuff on his operating arm. “There’s not much call for a non-operating orthopedic surgeon,” he says wryly.

Taffet looks like the Elliot Stabler character on Law & Order: SVU, and carries himself with Stabler’s chest-out machismo. “I think Susanne thinks I have an attitude,” he says. “The truth is, I have a stiff back.”

Bob and Michele Taffet can’t figure out how their situation with the neighbors got so out of hand. “I never wanted four dogs,” says Michele, a hazel-eyed blonde. “I have four children. But when we got Duke … Am I allowed to talk about this?” she appeals to her husband, who nods. “Duke had a bowel obstruction when he was five weeks old. A week later, another puppy from his litter choked to death.”

“We were worried they weren’t being watched closely enough,” Bob says. “So we took all four puppies.” At one point, Bob remembers, Susanne saw them out walking the four puppies and the two older dogs: “She just got increasingly incensed — ‘Oh my God, they have six of them!’” Eventually, the Taffets sold one puppy and gave another away. “So then we had the two puppies and Rocky and Bear,” Bob says.

“It was a lot of dogs,” Michele admits. “But the kids bonded with them. They said, ‘Oh, a dog for each of us!’”