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She (idiot owner) opens door and lets dog run free and all over the place, then wonders why he gets shot when he makes himself at home on property belonging to other people?
Yes, I have loads of sympathy for the dog, and I believe the shooter is probably off in the head. But....you simply don't open your door and shoo your dog outside and expect it to end well. All dogs deserve better owners. The outrage should begin with the dog's owner.
And it frequently visited a neighborhood day care center?
Can you imagine the twist the story would take had the dog injured a kid while it was roaming free?
Same old boring, disgusting story: "But my dog never hurt a flea..."
Read the story. A relative in the home let the dog out--not the owner. yes dogs should not run free but that does not give ANYBODY the right to kill it. The kid who shot the dog had never spoken to the owner about the dog being free. It was a cowardly way to handle a problem which very well may have been solved with a bit of mature communication.
It crossed land belonging to the shooter to get to the day care center. It did this frequently.
I believe the shooter is off in the head.
I believe the dog owner is at least as crazy as the shooter.
Neither gets one whit of sympathy from me.
Only the dog has my sympathy.
It's rural Maryland - we're talking about a dirt road. Have you ever been to rural Maryland? It's basically like a suburb of West Virginia.
Keeping dogs fenced is a relatively new phenomenon, especially in rural areas. Where I grew up, nobody kept their dog fenced in until I was in my teens and the area got more suburban. I remember specific dogs visiting the playground of my private school from the surrounding (very wealthy) neighborhood, and nobody thought it was anything but great, not even the administrators. As long as a dog wasn't harassing someone or another animal, nobody cared. Cripes, we even had a dog pack roaming my neighborhood. But I remember neighbors' dogs coming onto our property all the time, and no one thought anything of it as long as the dog was friendly. And my neighborhood was basically full of gun-toting rednecks.
My dogs are never unsupervised or loose. But like I said, my area turned from rural to suburban, and now I live in an urban area. Most people with half a brain don't leave their dogs to roam, but rural practices have always been different. This guy violated every standard of conduct for a rural area. But the dog's owner was likely right in line with standard practices, as abhorrent as they seem to you. People in areas like that are still in the "farm dog" mentality.
I have also heard stories about dogs making a nuisance of themselves on the property of non-owners in rural areas, being shot. In fact it has been my observation that any animal that is a repeated nuisance to a landowner in a rural part of the country is at risk for being shot. When my husband lived in the middle of nowhere in Kentucky, he was told by local law enforcement when he complained about a neighbor's dogs running around on his property, barking at his wife and acting threatening...that if they were on his property he had the right to shoot them. He was hoping for some kind of animal control visit, but the county didn't have the resources to provide it, and their answer was "shoot the dogs."
So it being a rural area really isn't an excuse.
If you care about your pets, you keep control over them. If you don't want to control them, then you can't get outraged when something like this happens, as awful as it is.
(EDIT: I should point out, my husband loves dogs and did not shoot his neighbor's dogs. They fueded over the matter for a few years and then my husband moved elsewhere.)
Dogs get shot in rural areas if they're running free. I had a friend whose dog got out and ran into a nearby pasture. She luckily was right on it's heels and got it out of there, but as they were walking away, the owner of the pasture came out and said that if he saw the dog in there again (where he keeps sheep), he was going to shoot it. He was nice enough, but he made it clear that he wasn't going to lose any sheep to a giant dog (who happens to look a little wolfish). If you don't want your dog shot or run over or dog-napped, or whatever else, then don't let the dog run freely outside.
They had bought a new runner for the dog that day. It is unclear if the dog was actually "let" out or "got" out from reports i"ve read.
Yes, dog should have been contained properly. The owner obviously was aware of this and was taking the steps to rectify the situation.
But really? A guy shoots a dog in the back (walking away) and THEN shooting it in the head in the direction of aowards a day care full of kids? And has a long criminal history to boot? Shouldn't be allowed to own a gun. I actually question why he didn't have to surrender his guns based on the charges against him last year (robbery/burglary, possession etc). This guy is such an idiot, he will be the poster boy for the anti gun crusaders.
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