In my experience, that nugget is true. YMMV, of course.
I’m speaking from my boyhood growing up on a farm, and I’ll stand by my statement.
And I’ll agree with the last post, having spent 30 years training bird dogs.
Hell, I’ve had some that never did learn after their first encounter with a porcupine - they’d chase everyone down they could find and kill them, and I’d spend hours pulling quills out of them.
Even if we stipulate that the dog had to be killed (which I do not at all agree with, because there were plenty of ways to keep it away from chickens), that should have been the result of a sober decision-making process that included the whole family. Which it clearly wasn’t. Sure, maybe farmers can’t get too emotional about their working animals, but they damned well better care about their children.
Interestingly, in my jurisdiction “euthanizing” your own pet is entirely legal.
Even if we stipulate that some dogs will remain chicken killers despite any training they receive…
I’m of the opinion that it’s hard to extrapolate this to “all dogs”.
Also - there are other options other than taking a young dog to a gravel pit and shooting it in the face with a shotgun.
In addition to the dog - she also subsequently took a goat to the gravel pit, and shot it with the shotgun. Oh, and this first shot did not kill it and she had to wander back to the truck for more shells. Why? Because it was “mean and smelly and uncastrated, and chased her children and ruined their clothes” I have never owned a goat, but I’d hazard a guess that this was not an ideal way to dispatch a farm animal. But it does not sound like it was a farm animal in the traditional sense, kept in a pen. It sounds like she thought it was a free-roaming family pet. An uncastrated goat was “mean and smelly” No kidding.
This woman does not sound like a farmer to me. She sounds like an unbalanced, cruel pretend farmer.
Noem summed up my attitude towards the whole situation herself:
“I guess if I were a better politician," she added, "I wouldn’t tell the story here.”
Maybe you’ve seen a dog that had killed, but was subsequently trained not to kill again. I haven’t.
But I agree with your statements regarding the goat. She killed the goat for simply being a goat.
Like I said in this thread or the other one on the subject, my sister’s dog killed all her chickens the first night she brought them home. She got new chickens right away, and trained the dog not to kill them. It took about a week at best.
I don’t agree with, and have no knowledge about the efficacy, but a typical way people attempt to train dogs not to kill chickens again is to strap the dead animal to the dog for awhile and berate/punish them. My sister did not use this method.
Personal anecdotes are not data.
But even stipulating you are correct, there are other options - like putting the dog into a new situation where there is no opportunity to kill chickens, ever.
Brookings Regional Humane Society is a 45 minute drive to Noem’s farm, and they would have very likely taken the dog in and re-homed it to a non-farm city family. There was no need to shoot the dog in the face with a shotgun.
That’s the part that really disturbs me. Pistol, rifle, yeah a single clean ‘one shot, one kill’. A fucking shotty at contact range that’s . . . extreme.
The other disturbing thing is that after shooting the dog, she also shot the goat the same way… but it did not go well. The goat did not die.
So she had to go back to the truck for more shells.
What. The Actual. Fuck.
And she wrote about this in her book. “Yay me! I can’t even kill a goat a point blank range with a shotgun!”
It’s legal to use any method to euthanize a dog? Most jurisdictions have pretty decent laws on animal cruelty. It’s not kosher to toss a sack of kittens in the pond anymore. I can see it being legal to give your dog a shot of something lethal at the end of its life. Slitting its throat or shooting it, not so much.
My gf was at the veterinarian’s office in the waiting room and a woman was calling her husband to get his permission to spend money for their dog’s euthanasia. Her husband told her that was ridiculous, a bullet was cheaper.
She looked into it and found that shooting your pet was acceptable.
I honestly thought the last word there was going to be “cheaper.”
Yes! This was not some “tough but unavoidable part of a farmer’s life.” And I don’t give a fuck if there’s some farmer’s code that accepts such an awful act. If you shoot a dog in the face with a shotgun, you’re a shitty person. If you could have made a phone call and resolved the problem without harming the dog—and instead shot a dog in the face with a shotgun—you’re a shitty person.
Fuck all this “you city folk just don’t understand” bullshit. What she did was horrible, she’s a disgusting human being, and that dog did not need to be shot. That’s it.
My mom keeps chickens, and has a dog (and has had dogs for decades). And, no disrespect intended to her, but she hasn’t done the best job in training her current dog, who is a difficult one. But she’s still managed to keep all of her dogs from killing any of her chickens. How? The same way that she’s managed to keep raccoons, possums, foxes, coyotes, and eagles (all of which we can have around here) from killing any of her chickens: The chickens are kept in an enclosure.
And this is in the city, where all of those animals (while present) are relatively rare. Out in the countryside, any unprotected chicken is going to be killed by something.
She had time to write a check, take the dog to a different location, shoot the dog, go get the goat, shoot the goat, go the the truck to get more ammo, then shoot the goat again.
Seems like she could have figured something out. Even if the dog had to be put down, call a damn vet.
That was a historic explosion. First time in history marijuana has killed anybody.
I’m sure this was meant as a joke but in reality people do die from marijuana use. Not directly of course, but through being intoxicated. Generally some kind of accident or drowning.
Extremely rare though. It’s also why driving under the influence of marijuana is illegal.
There’s also this:
Not that I’m suggesting that marijuana is particularly dangerous in itself. Hell, I’m careful not to drive or engage in any potentially risky activity after taking an antihistamine either.
Oh, but turning it over to them would require admitting that she hadn’t been able to train it properly – can’t have that!