By: Gerald Harris
A while back it was reported on television and in the newspapers that a dog had its throat slit and lived to tell about it. The guy who did it didn’t do a complete job on the dog and now he is probably regretting it. The people that work at the Humane Society were quite upset and they pushed the issue until the culprit was found and apprehended. It seems that the person that did the throat slitting admitted it and said it was done because the dog was chasing cars and wouldn’t obey and stop the chase. The man got very upset and slit the dogs throat. People in the area of Fargo near where the incident took place got very upset that a man would do such a thing and they called for the maximum penalty, which is something like 2 years in jail and a very large fine.
Because of the people demanding that the throat slitter be punished severely another man chimed in with a letter to the editor and said that the man that did the throat slitting was entirely within his rights because he owned the dog because he bought and paid for it. If he no longer wanted the dog it was his right to kill it. That really upset a lot of people and the letters to the newspaper in Fargo came rolling in. They could not believe that someone would think that way about a poor little doggie. It is inhuman for someone to think that they have a right to kill a dog or other such pet oriented animal. I don’t know how they feel about cats because all those writing in are dog lovers, probably until they step in dog do-do on their front lawn. At that point they may want to slit the dogs throat or some such thing.
It’s a good thing that we don’t print everything we hear about the treatment of hunting dogs that go astray while hunting wild game. This often infuriates the owners of the dogs to the point where they shoot at the dog. I watched my father do that in the 1940s while hunting pheasants near Cresbard, SD. He wasn’t a real good shot so he wanted to get real close to the pheasants before shooting and the cussed dog would get too far ahead and not listen and so he would get shot in the butt. He only hit him one time. The dog didn’t come back for quite sometime. As a young boy I was really sad that the dog got lost. She came back happy as can be.
But, getting back to the story of the throat slitter, I also heard not long ago about a guy that shot a dog because it wouldn’t stay home. He said dogs can’t be running loose in the country and causing problems for farmers and their animals. Of course those farm animals will eventually be killed for food and not one of the people complaining about the throat slitter will protest. In fact most of them will sit down to a meal of steak and potatoes. The shooter in this case didn’t have any feelings for the dead dog except the satisfaction that it wouldn’t run again. Sounds something like the dog that got its throat slit for chasing cars. How about if the dog decides that a little kid on a bicycle looks like a car and catches the kid on the bike and takes a chunk out of him. Would it be alright to cut the dogs throat then?
I wonder too, how many people that are so concerned that the throat slitter gets his just punishment will go to the humane society this week and adopt a dog or cat. How about adopting one of the horses that people want to catch and send to France for food consumption. Will these so-called humane do-gooders do that? Another thought was that if you take on a pet you have a responsibility for its care. If that is the case, what do you do with a dog you no longer want or can’t take care of. Evidently people don’t want the dogs throat slit, so you just let them loose in the country side to fend for themselves. In many cases some one in the rural area will use the wild dog for target practice and leave them there to die.
The throat slitter should of course be punished for being stupid if nothing else. He should have seen to it that the dog was dead and not leave it to suffer. For that he should be fined $500 and told not to do it again. Animals are private property as far as I’m concerned and the owners have the responsibility to see that they are under control at all times. If they are uncontrollable they should be put out of their misery. A last thought is that maybe the people that are
concerned about the dog should be concerned also about the slaughter that is going on in Iraq and Afghanistan that we have caused.
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Proverb “Cave canem (Beware of the dog).” Anonymous Latin