Shooting dogs…You do what you have to do!

I’m not going to earn any new friends from this post. Let’s face it, people shooting dogs, or any other pets are considered monsters. I’m serious! Watch a violent movie filled with gruesome scenes of blood and gore, then in the middle of all the violence let the scene change to a happy one, with a long-haired, puppy faced dog…

The killer advances…The widdle pupper doo jumps a bit, and lets out a squeaky little yelp, and the folks in the audience crouch low in their seats, some look away, others say things along the lines of “NO! Not the little puppy!”

Meanwhile, on the screen, the killer steps forward again. Now all we see is the back of the killer as he moves in on the puppy, and we hear the dog bravely fighting off the killer. His barks and growls sound like he just might pull it off! Then? Then there is the sharp terrified, confused, and final yelp, and a trickle of blood runs between the killer’s feet. The dog is dead, and the audience is traumatized.

No matter that the dog’s owner, 16-year-old high school cheerleader, home-coming queen, and class president is now hiding up in her closet on the fifth floor of the family home, where oddly enough there is no cell phone coverage. Everybody knows she’s going to die. Everybody knows her boyfriend is going to break down the door to the house, and confront the killer in front of the closet door in an attempt to save his teen love interest. He will take a blade in the thorax, and gurgle his last words in a fountain of blood, and then the killer will chop his head off to make sure the deed his done. His head will roll across the floor, and stop at the closet door. His lifeless eyes will lock with the eyes of the girl in the closet, and she will scream, and some of the folks in the audience might even laugh a bit over all this…BUT NOT THE DOG! NO WAY!

Well, now the good folks at ” Justice For Bruno” are trying to make it illegal, a felony even, for pet owners to shoot their dogs, after ‘Bruno’ was gunned down by his owner in Berlin New Hampshire. His owner, Ryan Landry posted to his facebook account that he had shot the dog after it had bitten one of his children. A move I know I most certainly would have made, as I am sure many people I know would too.

It is said that Mr. Landry should have taken the dog back to the shelter, where trained professionals could determine if the dog was indeed dangerous, and if so, he could have been put down in a more humane manner.

As a survivor of a vicious dog attack, I can tell you that is not always the way. Granted my incident took place in the early 1970’s where people weren’t so gung-ho for animal rights, so I suppose that could have played a part in it. My right cheek was laid wide open, by a bite from a Bluetick Coonhound. A chunk of my right ear was bitten off, and my scalp was lacerated by bite marks that indicate my skull was gnawed on. It was my third birthday.

The dog’s owners, friends of the family, wanted the dog to be put down; my own father was ready to shoot the dog himself. But it was urged that the dog be kept under observation, before being put down.

A short time later, after my recovery began, my parents wanted to get me a puppy so I would not be afraid of dogs. Imagine their surprise when they saw the dog that bit me sitting there waiting to be adopted!

Apparently the folks at the shelter deemed the dog to be a great dog, and deduced that I must have abused the dog for him to bite me, and if we wanted such a beautiful animal to be destroyed, we didn’t deserve to own a dog.

Dogs that bite, are just one reason an owner my chose to shoot a domestic animal. A cat might be sick; a dog may be old and crippled. It may simply be that the owner can no longer afford to keep the dog, and was not able to find a home for it.

Basically? If you ask me, it isn’t anybody’s business how a pet owner chooses to end the life of an animal. OK… kicking the living crap out of them, starving them, or setting them loose to fend for themselves should be, and IS frowned upon already. But lethal injection at a veterinarian’s office, or a few bullets? Both are getting the job done. If a guy or a gal shoots their dog, and is a crappy aim and wounds the dog, then lets it lay there and bleed for several minutes? OK, that’s bad.

Did that happen in this case? Evidence would suggest it did.  It seems the dog was shot 4 times in the back, and left to die in the woods.  Some say the dog was running from the owner.  If that is the case, and the dog was fleeing after it bit the child, a finishing shot to the head should have been made.  Sadly, in this instance, it seems the owner had a week previously posted on facebook that he wanted to find a home for the dog, and that he was good with kids. 

In this situation, there is evidence to support that perhaps this man had other options.  DONT GET ME WRONG!  If the man wanted to re-home the dog, and was unsuccessful, and then he decided to shoot the dog in the head?  I say that was up to him.  A choice you or I have no right to make for him.  And before you get mad at me, have you ever had a friend ask you to help them find a home for a dog?  I know I have!  Did YOU take the dog in? Yeah, me neither.  Shelters across the nation are full of unwanted pets, and every day shelters kill many of those unwanted pets. Human beings kill animals!

They do it for protection, for food, and even for fun or convenience. MANY more dogs and cats are killed in scientific research, than are killed by gun-toting owners. That is the way it has been, and it is the way it is likely to be forever.

People need to stop trying to pass laws that intrude on other people’s rights. Look, if you don’t want to shoot a dog? Don’t do it!  Especially if it is run over by a car in rural Maine during the predawn hours on a Sunday morning! By all means, scoop that broken body up in your loving arms, and put it in the back seat of your car. Race home to find the phone number to a vet clinic open at zero daylight thirty on a Sunday, then drive the ten miles or more to the clinic. Let the vet do an examination, and take costly X-rays, and subject the broken dog to more movement, and pain in its broken limbs. Then let the vet tell you more than an hour after the poor dog has been hit, that it would be better to put it down….Or? You could just shoot the friggin thing in the road and get it over with!

All I am saying is if we let these activists pass laws like this, soon, you won’t be able to chop the heads off your own rabbits, chickens, or turkeys. You won’t be able to use worms for fishing, and you MOST certainly won’t be able to use LIVE minnows! As a matter of fact…Should you even be catching fish with sharp hooks in the first place? I mean wont you let them writhe in the dirt, or flop on the ice till they freeze to death, while gasping for air?

Come to think of it, maybe WE SHOULD ban the killing of domestic animals. Scratch that ALL animals. Maybe we should just eat vegetables…Although… I HAVE heard plants have feelings too…

 

Doug Alley

About Doug Alley

I grew up in Bath, Maine in an upper lower class family with 3 step sisters, a step brother, and a little sister. After high school I spent 3 years serving in the USAF at Elmendorf AFB in Anchorage AK. I've competed in, and won, demolition derbies. I've competed in, and never won, stock car races. I am the 47-year-old father of an 11-year-old boy who is pretty sure he is smarter than I ever was. We live on a little less than an acre of land in a 1973 mobile home in Stetson with my wife Jen, some cats, a few chickens, and rabbits, and a couple of goats. I hunt, fish, camp out, dabble in photography, gardening, and I cook in variable degrees of near success.