Playing God

Sometime around the first week of June someone dropped four dogs into our world. We didn't want a dog and we really didn't want four of them. My wife and I pretended to ignore them for a week or so, but they kept hanging around. I went around to the neighbors to see if they belonged to anyone. They didn't.

I called the sheriff's office and was told there was nothing they could do about stray dogs but that I had the right to protect my property and livestock. We don't have livestock so to rationalize killing the dogs to protect my property was a bit of a stretch. I ignored them for another week or so.

Even though we were not feeding them they began to get territorial, sleeping under the cars and charging out barking when anyone approached. On my next day off, with my wife at work, I took the .22 rifle out. Two of the dogs charged out from beneath my pickup truck and I shot them. The other two ran in directions that made it unsafe to shoot. I spent the rest of my day off disposing of bodies. I hoped that the other two would not come back.

They did. A few days later my wife came home from work and found one of the dogs under the pickup with a new litter of pups. Twelve of them. Being who she is, she of course made a bed in the barn and moved the pups and mother into the barn and went to town and bought food. This is one of the reasons that I love her. She is sometimes loud and gruff but she is one of the kindest people that I have ever known.

Ma was starving at that point, so emaciated that every rib stuck out, and she was covered with ticks. I expected most of the pups to die. They didn't. Of course, since we were feeding the mother we had to feed the other stray. Flea and tick collars took care of the tick problem and both dogs began to eat and gain weight although Ma was slow to recover due to nursing 12 pups.

I know, most of you are thinking, "You should have killed the pups then and been finished with it". I didn't. I couldn't. It was never the dogs fault that they were here. I could have killed whoever dropped them off, but killing the dogs was not easy for me.

Over the next couple of weeks we bought material to make a pen for the pups as they got older and took Dumbass, the other stray to the vet and had her spayed, thinking it would be easier to give her away if she was healthy and spayed. No one would take her.

As we began to see the personalities of the adult dogs emerge we, of course, became attached to them. Dumbass is turning out to be a pretty good dog. She stays outside, comes when you call her and generally protects the place. One evening , after dark when my wife was home alone, Dumbass began to make a racket, barking, growling and snarling. Shortcake turned the porch light on to find a man at the bottom of the steps. Dumbass stayed between her and the stranger until the man left. She is a keeper.

Ma, on the other hand, was not a keeper. As the pups got older and she left them for longer periods she spent her time chasing cars, barking at mouse farts two counties away and chasing anything that moved. She wouldn't come when we called her but would slink away only to reappear and start raising hell again. The yard looks like a war zone where she has dug huge holes. We gritted our teeth because of the puppies.

Now the pups are weaned, most of them gone to homes with people who wanted them. We have three left but two are spoken for. I guess we will keep the third.

Today I killed Ma. I did not "put her down". It wasn't euthanasia. It was murder. Premeditated. I had tried to shoot her before but she seemed to have a sense of when to place herself where I could not get a shot. Today, I tricked her. I coaxed her to me with a dog treat and soft words. Then I placed the muzzle of the pistol to the back of her head and squeezed the trigger.