When we moved here about 8 years ago I had just gotten a puppy. She was half chow & half whatever. My husband wanted her brother but there was just something about her that clicked for me so she was the one we took home. I named her Harmony. After we moved & she got several months old she got to chasing cars. Nothing I did to her stopped her. And then a pickup hit her. The lady was very sorry but I told her it wasn't her fault. I took Harmony to the vet & he stitched her up & she stopped chasing cars.
Our place is 4 1/2 acres. We have a neighbor who lives behind us with an access road to his house that runs through our propery. Since we live in the country, no one pens their dogs in. When we moved here, my neighbor had lots of dogs - I counted 13 dogs & puppies one time - & they were coming into our yard, pooping everywhere but the main thing was eating all our dog food we'd set out for Harmony. When we'd run out of chicken feed we'd throw dry dog food to them. My husband taught our animals to leave the chickens alone but the neighbor's dogs would come & dig into the chicken pen, eat the dog food & kill some chickens until we ran out to find out what all the commotion was.
My neighbor had lived there about 10 years before we moved there so we didn't want to make trouble or be known as the upstarts. So, we'd yell at his dogs to "get outta here" & they'd run back home. Harmony started chasing after them & eventually none of them would come into our yard.
About a year ago someone dropped off a dog my kids named Sugar, who had puppies. We kept a male because my husband told my daughter she could have one.
Sugar & her pup (who's now about a year old) started chasing the neighbors dogs back home, same as Harmony. Only these are new, smaller dogs, & they have attacked them. Harmony will also get into the fight when one starts. We suspect our dogs are what killed one of the neighbor's dogs but no one saw anything so we can't be sure. This past Wednesday my neighbor came into my yard & shot my 8 year old dog in front of me & my kids. I asked him what was he doing because I thought he just had a pellet gun (I didn't know 22s weren't loud). He shot her 3 times, killing her with the 3rd shot. He said because he saw her & at least one other dog killing his dog (this is a second dog of his).
I really want to be fair about this, really. I understand that dogs can be dangerous & I wouldn't want them around me either. But we taught one dog who then taught the others to basically do what they did. Which was to chase off other dogs. We didn't mean for them to take it so far. Still, right or wrong, I am very angry with my neighbor. We didn't say anything to him about needing to feed his dogs so that they wouldn't come get our's. We didn't say anything when we kept having to redo the chicken coop & we didn't say anything about the dead chickens. We didn't want to start anything or nitpick.
Once, when I was working as a cashier from 2-10 p.m., my neighbor stopped by to tell me one of his dogs, a pit-mix, was in our hog pen with our hog. He said he thought my husband might have put the dog in there for chasing chickens or something. He was on his way to work & didn't stop to get the dog out. I called my husband & he didn't know the dog was in there. The dog had dug a big enough hole under the fence & got in to eat the hog slop/feed. My husband & son tried to get the dog out but she wouldn't come out & they couldn't go in because there was all this stinky mud all over the place that would suck your shoes right off your feet. My husband said screw it, the dog could find it's own way out & went back to the house. The next day, the kids went to school & my husband went to work so before I had to go to work I tried to get the dog to come out of the pen. I finally grabbed the dog & dragged her out of the pen. My neighbor never bothered to see about her or get her out or anything. That evening or the next (can't remember which) my husband called me to tell me the hog was dead. All the oldtimers say the dog probably ran the hog until he had a heart attack. I don't know, all I know is that there were no marks on the hog. We didn't know what had killed the hog & since he had been dead for an hour or two, we didn't use the meat. The hog was about 350 lbs. - we were getting ready to butcher him when he died - so we had to drag him with a chain & truck through the woods as far as we could go. All that food & time to fatten him up was wasted. My husband was angry at the neighbor because he wanted him to at least offer to pay us alittle something or buy us some meat or something. I said not to start anything & let it go. I did mention to the neighbor the hog died & we didn't know if the dog did it or not. A year or so later we got a goat & put him in the pen & within months we walked out to feed him & he was dead too. Don't know from what but my husband said he couldn't find any marks on the goat.
I'm very heartbroken over my dog, she was like my baby or something. She wasn't a bad dog. She hated baths but would go to the neighbor across the road & swim in her pond. She would fall asleep on her back with her paws stuck straight up - my husband said that was the sign of a content (or lazy) dog. There were times when people would come into the yard & she would plaster herself against me, & other times she seemed to sense they were okay & would go lay down. When my neighbor shot her the first time I saw it, I think she was coming to me thinking I would protect her.
I know some people will say she was just a dog or that she did something bad & deserved to be put down, but she was a good dog for 8 years before this. I'm chaining the other 2 up & it's my husband's & kids responsibility to keep their animals fed. I have so much anger & hostility in my heart for my neighbor now. He killed her in front of me & my kids, not 2 feet from my front door.
As I said, I'm trying to be fair & see both sides of this situation. But it's really hard when I go out behind my house to my garden & his dogs start barking. Or they follow him down the access road when he goes to work. My dog was only doing what we taught her to do. In fact, we encouraged her with telling her what a good girl she was for chasing the dogs off our land. Anyone want to give me pointers on how to be forgiving toward my neighbor & myself?
brenda_near_eno
ernie50
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