I arrived to find that in the single hour the dogs had been left alone in the back yard, they tore feathers out of two chickens and maimed one to near death. Sonya put a chick down once, and vows never to do it again (it didn't go well). So, I dispatched the hen, and cleaned up the mess.
Now, killing a chicken - not such a big deal, but this was the culmination of a string of events that in retrospect went on too long, and lead to a much more troubling event.
•This was the third chicken the dogs had killed.
•A week before this, I came home to find blood and poop everywhere - the dogs had attacked our new cat. This cat is pretty tough - the poop was his so he obviously was in a fight for his life, but the blood was Bleu's. The cat came out of it all unharmed; Bleu with scratches all over his face.
•A month or so before that attack, I was working outside when I heard the girls screaming (or so I thought) and the dogs going crazy. Fearing the worst, I ran inside and found Bleu attacking the cat (it was the cat screaming). No verbal commands worked - I had to stomp kick him to get him off.
•And, before all the other attacks on chickens and cats, our other dog, Max, bit my oldest daughter in the face. He didn't break the skin, but there are still some broken capillaries where it happened. It was a revenge/dominance thing, because my mother-in-law had scolded him for knocking her down. She was about 2 and we had a new baby, so Max was a little upset.
After an unhappy few days, my wife and I decided to put the dogs to sleep. They were becoming dangerous. For a long time, they wouldn't obey any adult but my wife and I, and now it was only my wife. These were big dogs and we worried that they would attack a child next. A few years ago we worked with a trainer to overcome some behavior issues. It was a fantastic success, but as they got older they were becoming a little crazy and we did not have the time to continually train them. They were pretty old, so we had no hope of anyone adopting them.
My wife had owned them since before we were married (10-12 years) so she took it pretty hard. Fortunately, the more time that has passed since we had them put down, the more obvious it is that we made the correct decision. Several of our neighbors have told us that they worried as they walked their dogs by our house, because our dogs would throw themselves at the window. Also, a house guest we had told us that the dogs had attacked the cat while he was there, and that they wouldn’t listen to him. Now we look back and think we should have done it a lot sooner. We tolerated a level of danger to our daughters, and other people that I wouldn’t tolerate now. It’s always easier to assess a situation when you aren’t in it.
One of our cats wandered off to die recently, too. She was really old and had survived severe injuries 3 times! Hit by a car once, attacked by coyotes twice. She was one tough cat. If you looked up “nine lives” in the dictionary there would be a picture of Nutmeg. The vet who treated her last injuries (coyote) joked that if you put two parts of her bones in the same room they would heal. She knew her way around and never got lost outside in all her 22 years, so we are certain that she left to find a quite place to die.
Well, enough about death already. Now, we have an elderly, grumpy black cat, Daisy, and a feisty young whippersnapper with the most amazingly smooth, sleek coat I’ve ever felt on a cat, Mr. Man. And a fish. I can’t remember the fish’s name, but it is one of the characters from Finding Nemo. Dori I think. And 3 chickens: Violet, Babs, and Señorita MacPhee.
No eggs yet. Moochers.
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