(written in 1972)<\/p>\n
I can\u2019t sleep.\u00a0 I keep trying to think of answers to the questions that came today<\/p>\n
and that will come again tomorrow. The man shot their dog.\u00a0 She is gone.\u00a0 Nothing will<\/p>\n
bring her back.\u00a0 They have accepted that fact.\u00a0 But the whys will come again tomorrow<\/p>\n
as they try to reconcile their questions with what the man did and what he said.<\/p>\n
The boys went looking for her this morning after only one dog came home alone<\/p>\n
with a bullet wound. The bullet had passed through his shoulder just under the skin and<\/p>\n
exited on the other side.\u00a0 He was more traumatized than hurt.\u00a0\u00a0 They went searching for<\/p>\n
their other dog. They were soon back from their search, hurt, sad and angry. \u00a0They found<\/p>\n
Princess dead in the pasture. Without a word, the youngest got on his bike and rode<\/p>\n
around and around the block to have time to control the tears. His brother immediately<\/p>\n
released his anger verbally. Why did the man cuss and talk to them so ugly?\u00a0 Their little<\/p>\n
sister just listened in disbelief and started crying.<\/p>\n
I first thought perhaps my older son\u2019s account was an adolescent outburst of<\/p>\n
emotion. When my youngest son returned and got off his bike, I asked him to tell me<\/p>\n
exactly what the man said.\u00a0 He repeated what his brother had told me.<\/p>\n
Yes, it was ugly. The man was angry and let them know it in no uncertain terms.<\/p>\n
He told them Princess deserved to die because she was running on his land. Then he<\/p>\n
ordered them off his land.<\/p>\n
The younger boy said, \u201cMom, he said all those bad words to us. He probably<\/p>\n
never had a dog when he was a little boy and he hates dogs now.\u201d<\/p>\n
Then he asked, \u201cCan a dog kill a cow?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cNo, but a dog can chase a cow and cause it to get hurt.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cDid daddy ever shoot a dog for chasing cows when we had cows?\u2019<\/p>\n
\u201cNo, we never had any trouble with dogs.\u201d<\/p>\n
I think back to my childhood and remember that packs of stray dogs occasionally<\/p>\n
bothered the baby calves. Our dog and the mother cows took care of the situation.\u00a0 When<\/p>\n
my father took out a gun, it was to shoot a rattlesnake or a skunk in the chicken house.<\/p>\n
Those were the only animals I ever knew him to shoot.<\/p>\n
The children\u00a0had\u00a0reminded me of an incident last spring before we moved to this new<\/p>\n
town and new neighborhood.\u00a0 A dog kept being a nuisance at night.\u00a0 Princess and Butch<\/p>\n
would chase him off, and he would promptly return. After several nights of disrupted<\/p>\n
sleep, turned over trash, and holes dug around the chicken pen fence, their Dad tried to<\/p>\n
catch the dog. The dog was the faster runner.\u00a0 The next night he sprayed buckshot over<\/p>\n
the dog\u2019s head. \u00a0That didn\u2019t scare him. .\u00a0 When the dog returned the next night, their Dad<\/p>\n
followed him home and talked to his owner. The problem was corrected.\u00a0 We never saw<\/p>\n
the dog again.<\/p>\n
Why didn\u2019t that man tell us if he thought she was chasing his cows?\u00a0 \u00a0I don\u2019t know.\u00a0 Do I tell them<\/p>\n
perhaps the man thought most people would not do anything?\u00a0\u00a0 What do I think most people would do?<\/p>\n
I do not know.\u00a0 I only know what we would have done if the man had talked to us. \u00a0I cannot answer for<\/p>\n
others.<\/p>\n
We are on the last street of a new subdivision in this small town.\u00a0 \u00a0There is open pasture<\/p>\n
behind the\u00a0houses.\u00a0\u00a0 We moved here from the country in the Rio Grande Valley of Texas.<\/p>\n
There were citrus groves and canals around us.\u00a0 The dogs had a morning ritual of running through the<\/p>\n
citrus groves and along a canal every morning.\u00a0 The time was always the same, between<\/p>\n
8:30 and 9:00 AM. \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0The runs lasted about 15 to 20 minutes.\u00a0 They took the same route<\/p>\n
every day and the neighbors often commented that they enjoyed watching them run by.<\/p>\n
They would return home and stay until the next morning when they repeated \u00a0the<\/p>\n
routine.\u00a0 I watched the dogs closely here. The pasture was like the home they had left.<\/p>\n
They were country dogs.\u00a0 They soon followed the same pattern, running in the<\/p>\n
pasture behind the houses.\u00a0 \u00a0We erroneously assumed there was nothing they could<\/p>\n
bother there. The runs were in the same time frame as their runs at their old home and<\/p>\n
lasted about 15 or 20 minutes.\u00a0 It was about 9:30 this morning when Butch came home<\/p>\n
alone.<\/p>\n
Later today their Dad found the man and confronted him. He was equally as<\/p>\n
unhappy as the man.\u00a0 \u00a0He described their meeting as \u201chead- on, direct.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0 The man was 60ish<\/p>\n
and not the\u00a0landowner. \u00a0He had the land leased. \u00a0He had never seen our dogs before, but someone had<\/p>\n
told him that they had seen some dogs chasing his calves.\u00a0 He just shot the first dogs that<\/p>\n
he saw.\u00a0 It happened to be our pets, Princess and Butch. \u00a0We can never prove that Princess \u00a0never had<\/p>\n
chased his calves, but this is little comfort to the children. She had never chased our livestock.<\/p>\n
They \u00a0retrieved\u00a0Princess\u2019s body and buried her in the backyard.<\/p>\n
Their Dad has no answers either. His question to me was, \u201cWhat kind of man<\/p>\n
talks to an eight year old boy that way after he has just killed his dog?\u201d<\/p>\n
I have no answer.\u00a0 The discussion will return as the children mourn for their beloved pet.\u00a0 Again,<\/p>\n
I will not\u00a0 have answers for them, only comfort as they accept the harsh reality.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Addendum:\u00a0 A few weeks later Ken was telling a long time area resident about the incident.\u00a0\u00a0The man\u00a0knew the man who shot the dog\u00a0and\u00a0told Ken that he was surprised that he had confronted\u00a0him.\u00a0 \u00a0He said, \u201cKen, he doesn\u2019t just shoot dogs.\u00a0 He just got out of prison for shooting a man.\u201d\u00a0 We never saw the man again and Butch\u2019s morning runs stopped.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
(written in 1972) I can’t sleep. I keep trying to think of answers to the questions that came today and that will come again tomorrow. The man shot their dog. She is gone. Nothing will bring her back. They have accepted that fact. But the whys will come again tomorrow as they try to reconcile […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-269","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-1972-to-1987"],"yoast_head":"\n