All I know is the 20 year old has a dog that may not be much longer for this life. The dog is a large mongrel, about a year old, clearly still getting the puppyness worked out. He seemed thrilled that we moved in with two dogs, and our Scooter especially likes playing with him. With no fences between the properties, he roams over here several times a day.
The chickens acted frightened of him, but he seemed to leave them alone. Until today, anyhow. Both our dogs were in my office building, and I was walking over to the house. There was a loud commotion in the chicken yard, and all of our poultry (chickens, ducks, and geese) were fleeing and making a huge racket. One chicken in particular was screaming in distress, so I ran to my office and grabbed my 12-gauge shotgun. Back behind the chicken yard, the neighbor's dog was going to work killing that particular chicken. As I approached, shotgun in hand, a funny thing happened: a 4x4 pickup truck with two young men came barrelling across our property. They jumped out and yelled at him, and the dog dropped the chicken.
Thinking this was the 20 year old neighbor, I waved the shotgun and explained that I was intending to scare the dog off with a warning shot (not kill him).
The young man replied, "Oh, he's not my dog. We just saw him killing this chicken, and wanted to stop. He belongs to _____, two houses down. If it was me, I'd put a bullet in this dog's neck."
Just then, the three of us started looking around. There were FOUR dead chickens scattered about. Of course, these were this year's pullets and were just now starting to lay. All that investment, and the whole egg laying career ahead of them. As the dog was still hanging around, I fired my warning shot above his head; that finally got him running for home. We talked for a bit more, all made our introductions, and they advised me to go speak with the grandfather of the dog's owner --- and take the dead chickens with me.
I did, and the grandfather promised to speak with the dog's owner and see what could be done about containing him. I felt bad that this was the way I had to meet the neighbors; fortunately, Mrs Yeoman Farmer had already stopped by and introduced herself, so we didn't get off entirely on the wrong foot.
I'm a dog lover myself, and can't imagine intentionally harming one other than to put it out of its misery. But if I ever again catch that dog even looking at my animals funny, all my inhibitions are going to go away.
2 comments:
Our dog killed 18 of our neigbor's chickens (which were penned-she bit off their feet). He caught our dog in the pen, but asked me to dispatch him-which I did. Fortunately, we had some chickens ourselves which our neighbor gladly took-although I had to talk him into it.
I've had to kill three dogs since we moved out into the country. Two were chasing the sheep and one was killing chickens. I've wounded two others. I hate doing it, but then I hate burying dead sheep too.
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