I'm doing bad things

The BBQ Pit
21

Scylla,

What the heck is wrong with you?

None of what you detailed qualifies as bad. It may have made you feel bad to have to do them, but you had to do them.

Any endeavor worth undertaking involves sacrifice, hard decisions, and decisive action. You want to run a farm? You may have to shoot stray animals who might endanger your livestock or family. Be glad you had the resolve, the equipment, and the knowledge to handle it as well as you did. Be really glad that the first person to encounter the dog wasn’t your daughter.

If you manage people, some of them will occasionally have to be fired. If you hadn’t fired them, what would have happened? Would they have hung on, costing the company money, not doing their jobs? I long for managers who know how to evaluate employees accurately, and reward those who do well, but get rid of the dead weight. It sounds like you were doing your job, well.

The relatives? Anyone who tries to take money from people who can’t defend it themselves is contemptible. Maybe you could have been more diplomatic, but at least now you know how far you can trust these people.

And the Amish kid? Maybe he’ll get a clue and not mess with the crazy guy’s farm anymore.

Seems to me that you’re a good man, Scylla. Good men are the ones who take on the tough jobs, and do them well. They’re the ones who can see that sometimes, you have to do something that feels bad to make good things happen.

My advice? Do some things that make you feel good. Do something great for your wife; no explanation, no reason, just surprise her with something she likes. Play with your daughter for an hour or two. Remind yourself why it is that sometimes, you’re the one who has to make the tough choices.

22

Some topics just aren’t meant for MPSIMS, and I really think this is one of them. I didn’t mean to implying that Scylla deserves to be critism-free, but I just didn’t think he deserved it in this case, especially when he feels so bad about it.

Scylla lives in a rural area; animal control may not have been an option. Even if they had been, they would have come out with nooses on poles, trapped the dog, and drug it into a cage in a truck, maybe causing it more pain in the process. I honestly think that Scylla provided the most humane way of ending the dog’s suffering. I wouldn’t have been happy about shooting the dog either, I love dogs and cats, but letting it continue to suffer would have been worse, IMHO.

23

Francesca:

A fair point. We do have animal control people that will come out, yet rarely on a same day basis, and there’s the matter of containing the dog until they arrive.

I’m not a vet, and I can’t evaluate the extent of it’s injuries in a meaningful way, and didn’t know how badly it was hurt till after I shot it.

My motivations were self-interested. As we’re located on a farm near a town and game lands, people set their dogs free near us. Come fall they get hungry or sick, and my neighbors and I end up shooting a few.

Honestly though, I guess it would have been within the scope of my abilities to put on some long sleeves, throw a blanket over the animal, put it in a cage and take it to the vet or the pound.

24

Dominatrix? Can do. Let me know next time you’re in Salt Lake or Seattle, I’ll get you some numbers.

Seriously, though, if you think the things you’ve done are “bad things,” get your head around it somehow. You shouldn’t need us to tell you that they weren’t really “bad.”

But if it helps, I don’t think you’re evil.

Well, not for those actions, that is.

::d&r::

25

Why wouldn’t you call animal control in these cases? Are these dogs, presumably former pets, so dangerous to your livestock that you should kill them? If you know they are there before they get hungry or sick, why couldn’t you call animal control? Do you just not know about them until they’re chasing your chickens around?

Do you really think this would have accomplished anything, except maybe get you bitten by a diseased dog? Stop begging for derision to assuage your guilt.

26

oh my goodness! am i the only one who read the first part about the dog, then read “i had to fire somebody” and immediatly expected it to be followed by " i got the .22, the shovel and the gas can again…"

you undoubtable handled all of the situations better than i would have. i think ya done good!

27

I’m really not putting these ou there as a sympathy thing, or a guilt thing.

I was just thinking that I’ve done a string of unpleasant and negative actions in the last week. Things that I consider, in and of themselves, without looking at context, as “bad.”

I got to thinking about my buddy, the Doctor, who’s been in like ten automobile accidents in as many years. All of these, were, technically, not his fault.

I’ve ridden with the guy, and dammit, if he has the right of way, he goes. So, while the accidents might not technically be his fault, it’s fair to say that he drives in a way that doesn’t give anybody else much margin for error, and he’s may be driving into avoidable situations.

When I see myself “having” to do several unpleasant or bad things in a row, it makes me wonder what part I myself might be playing in not avoiding, or even potentially creating these things.

The dog - Animal control will come out, but the dog was not there constantly, and they don’t respond promptly. We need to confine the dog if we want them to get it.

And yes, the stray dogs do become a danger. We have a few incidents every fall and winter as do our neighbors. My neighbor who’s lived here all his life (who I used to call whenever I had “living in the country” problems) advises shooting on sight any dog without a collar.

I’ve shot dogs before, because they were running deer, harassing the horses, and because they spred disease and are dangerous. I felt bad about this one because it was obviously a former pet, it was small, and it was cowering in a corner. It wasn’t obviously a serious threat.

The firing went well. I’m just in charge of a small group, and the person worked directly for me. But, I thought the person was smart and capable, and felt bad about doing it, but I don’t think I had much alternative.

The other two situations are a little different. I could have reacted differently. I purposefully chose to make a big deal and overreact. My rationale was that that was what the situation called for, but on the other hand am I rationalizing that and enjoying a situation where I get to go over the top when I could be more efficiently and diplomatically handling the situation without being confrontational.

Maybe I’m looking for trouble.

Again, I’m not looking for validation or condemnation. thought it would be an interesting thread.

28

Mrs. InkBlot once worked for many years in an Animal Hospital (she’s since graduated to humans), and she’d be the first to tell you that last sentance is dangerously optimistic.

Yes, it is possible the dog was not a serious threat, but without a proper diagnosis under clinical conditions you can never be sure. As you mentioned, wild dogs in your area can carry all manner of disease, something exasperated by severe wounds such as that dog had. More then that, because of those wounds, that dog’s willingness to trust anyone was completely gone. Even a long sleeved shirt and blanket would not have been adequate protection if you had tried to capture it alive.

You did the right thing, I believe, and I hope you also cleaned up throughly both yourself and anything else the dog came into contact with before you laid it to rest.

Sometimes you do bad stuff, and it comes back to you. Sometimes, you’re the bad stuff coming back to someone else. Substitute “good” for “bad” in the previous sentance, and it still works. It’s not easy, but it works.

inkblot

29

Yes, and then we would have had the “Scylla gets rabies” thread to go with Scylla loses a pound of flesh, Scylla eats so much he bloats up like Mr. Creosote, Scylla has hands like a Dick Tracy villain, Scylla starts a land war in Asia, and so on. You’re not doing bad things, you’re doing necessary things. The fact that you don’t like doing them and do it anyway only speaks well of your character.

30

Wow.

I came in to this thread expecting another sheep story, and get this instead. I feel for you, Scylla. Bad things suck truly, but they’re part of life anyway. If it matters, you did right by the dog, IMO. It hurts a lot inside, but it needed to be done. I realize the good intentions of those who believe you should have called someone, but it would only have prolonged its suffering. Believe me, I know how you feel. I’ve been there myself.

Warning: Sad, icky story alert

I was driving home one night several years ago; out in the country, nice empty paved road, cruising along and enjoying the night air. Doing about 60. Raccoon runs out in front of me, with predictable results. I stopped, got out to inspect the damage. My car was okay. The coon (very large) was not okay.

It was disemboweled. And still alive.

Now I love raccoons. They are the coolest animals in the world. I grew up on a farm, and we had several as pets over the years (rescued “road orphans”). This one looked up at me, but couldn’t get up itself. It was helpless. I took the jack handle to its head. Sometimes you just can’t do anything else. I cried for days over it (and being at work presently, am desperatly trying not to do so now), but life isn’t always wonderful, no matter how hard we wish it was.

Don’t let these things eat you up. You made sound decisions, just difficult ones. That takes true strength of character, which you have in spades. Let that compensate for the pain.

But with the bad things, also come good ones. I found this for you. Hope it helps. Hug your daughter. That will help, too. :slight_smile:

Dijon

31

Shoot the dog.

Mail it to your relatives.

Put your employee’s return address on the package.

When they arrive at your door, have the Almish kid row them about in the pond to sooth their feelings.

Use the gasloline to blow up the boat while they are all in it.

Bury the remains at the back of your employee’s property.

Turn your employee in to the police for going postal after being fired.

Now, are your really doing bad things?

32

Re: the dog. This story will be graphic and contains depictions of a suffering animal- avoid if squeamish.

I used to work at a golf course. One day a coworker and I were doing some work on a sprinkler head when we heard a whimpering from the bushes just behind us. Some clearing revealed a red fox, about two and a half feet long. He was whining and obviously too weak to move. He had been in a fight with some other animal, apparently. He was pretty well torn up and had the same sort of smell that Scylla mentioned. A large chewed area on his haunch was infested with maggots. The poor thing was alive and conscious, and followed us with his eyes and weakly with his head. He was whining constantly but weakly, and I could hear him breathing.

After some discussion, my friend and I determined that it was dangerous to leave a living, injured fox where someone might stumble upon it, and also that he was beyond help. I’ll never be truly sure of that last, as I’m not a vet. But he was being eaten alive and couldn’t move. We returned to the shop to try to find something that we could dispatch him quickly with. I found a large spade and we tossed it in the cart and drove back.

When I got out and approached him with the spade, I looked into his eyes for a while. I’ll remember the look forever. I remember thinking, I have to kill this animal with the first swipe, or I will just cause him more suffering. It is the most difficult thing that I’ve ever made myself do, physically. I took one big swing and crushed his head, killing him instantly. We removed the body carefully and buried it deep in a non-public area.

I still wonder if it was the right thing to do, and if there were other options that didn’t involve prolonged suffering for this animal. I do know that while he was able to move his head slightly to follow my movements, he made no effort to move his head when I began to swing. Indeed, the expression on his face never changed. I like to think that I saved him more agony.

To take an innocent life in such a personal way, even if your goal is merciful and pragmatic, even when you have had the opportunity to think about it, can be a traumatic thing. I still think about this little fox sometimes, and it was going on a decade ago. So Scylla, I understand.

33

I like to think that the way people view the world has a large amount to do with how the world treats them. I had a manager at a previous job who was one of the few true cowards I’ve ever had to be in close proximity to for any length of time–among other problems, he was constantly, totally worried about things going wrong. The job entailed mostly keeping watch over a raft of computer systems, so that if things did in fact go wrong, response measures could begin immediately instead of waiting till the next business day; of course it’s only anecdotal, but I swear, things broke down at a much higher rate when he was around than otherwise. The weeks when he was on vacation were the smoothest-running weeks that existed.

It’s a somewhat torn view; I’m skeptical because it seems awfully close to a light form of magical thinking, but on the other hand…it just feels right sometimes. On the other other hand, it’s a human tendency to find patterns of meaning, even when there’s none there. In the logical view, systems going all twitchy happened in clusters because changes to them happened in clusters; all system changes at that employer were written up in various paperwork and whatnot beforehand, and the more there was of that, the more worried manager became. Still, magical thinking is seductive.

Hmm. And now I find myself with no punchline. I’ll set these crickets before the mike, and let them have their say.

::crickets::

34

There are times when my being such a pacifist is a bad thing. I don’t think I could do this. I would stand there and KNOW that it was the best thing to do, without a single question. I would desperately WANT to do it…but I just don’t think I could. I’ve been faced with similar circumstances 3 different times and I wimped out every time…a rat, a pigeon, and a chicken. I could never strike the killing blow.

I suck.

35

Hey, even I had to kill an animal once. A few months ago, I found a rat in a trap set by my neighbor. It was very badly injured, but very much alive. I ended up taking a sledgehammer to it. I know, I know, you’re thinking “It’s just a rat!” but remember, I have two pet rats, not to mention the care of a couple dozen at work. To me, it’s right up there with dogs and cats.
You did what you had to. Don’t beat on yourself. I know it was the only option you could see at the time.

36

I went through exactly that while standing at the edge of the road. It was still conscious and looking at me, and that’s what made me decide that finishing it was the pacifistic thing to do. It was too horrible to do otherwise.

37

Oh, and you don’t suck. :slight_smile: