Dog owner responds to criticism

Editor,

This is in response to, "Dog owners have responsibilities," which was in response to my letter about the shooting of my dog.

I want to clarify to the person who responded and to anybody else who may have had some of the same opinions.

First, to the person who wrote, "Dog owners have responsibilities," don't tell me you're sorry for the loss of our dog, when in fact you are directly blaming me and my family for the death of our dog because we don't keep our dogs locked up at night.

For everybody else who just assumes that my dog was killed because it barks or was bothering livestock: My dog that died was 8 years old, my other dog is 9, they are mutts; they aren't a hyper, livestock chasing breed of a dog. They aren't untrained, obnoxious dogs that cause problems. I can't say I know exactly what my dogs do at night when they aren't being watched, but I can tell you that if I went outside to see where they were, the majority of the time they are in their dog house. On some occasions they are barking at wild animals, but they are always within a shout of calling them.

My dogs don't bark at humans, they bark at creatures roaming through our property. They have kept numerous bears out of our yard. I don't live on farming land, I live on mountain land and our dogs have 80 acres to play on. They don't venture out of our property boundaries much and when they do, it's not for long; the only reasons they may have ventured is because they sensed something out of the ordinary or saw a wild animal, or somebody was walking on the road. They are watch dogs.

Most everybody past our driveway probably knows exactly who our dogs belonged to and nobody has ever complained about our dogs; in fact our dogs usually greet passersby taking walks, and all the dogs in that area pretty much know each other.

I have seen several of my neighbors' dogs come up our driveway, but does that mean that each time somebody else's dogs walk on our property that I am going to shoot it? No, it doesn't. If I had a problem with somebody's dog I would inform the owner. My dog was found dead on our property, along side the road. So for those thinking that our dog shouldn't have been running around carelessly, you should consider that. We don't know why we found her there, only the person(s) who shot her knows why and I don't know what my dog was doing when she was shot, but any sane person should have notified my family if there was a problem with our dog before shooting her.

I don't have a problem with the dogs in my area running free because none of them have caused problems. Keeping your dogs chained or kenneled isn't being kind to them either. If I kept my dogs chained up, what would happen if a wild animal came into our yard?

You must have missed the fact that horses were also shot recently. Our local law officers didn't seem to do much about that and that was part of the reason I wrote my first letter.

For those people who misinterpreted my mentioning of a CSI team, I never directly said I wanted a CSI team investigating, I simply wanted an officer to come and question my neighbors about hearing gunshots or seeing anything out of the ordinary that night.

I'm sorry I didn't make myself clear when discussing that. When the horses were shot, our local law officers obviously didn't question everybody nor did they when my dog was shot. My point was that if this happens again, will they do something about it? Somebody is being careless about their gun responsibilities and the two incidents may or may not be related, but somebody is shooting animals and nothing is being done about it. Just because somebody's dog comes on your property, it shouldn't give you the right to kill it; there are other options.

The comment on, "if you cared enough about your family member it would not have been wandering around carelessly" is an insult. My dogs don't run around carelessly … I am insulted that somebody would tell my family that we don't care about our dogs. If I didn't care I wouldn't have put an alert ad or these letters in the paper.

For the comment on, "if my dog was killed by a vehicle" that would depend on where I live. If I lived alongside the highway I would blame myself because I know how dangerous the highway is, but since I live on a narrow, dead-end road that should have a speed limit less than 25 mph I would blame the driver because they were driving too fast for the conditions of our road.

Dog owners do have responsibilities, but before you respond to my situation, maybe you should consider some of the facts. There are discrepancies in everything and you and probably others have obviously not considered any of them.

The lives of my pets (which are like children to me) are very important; the life of my human family and friends is also very important. They both are irreplaceable and they are comparable … I can get another pet, but it never ever replaces the one that died. All of my pets have their own personalities, just like humans.

Heather Dobson

Polson