For about a month now I’ve had my dogs out on the farm.  My mother also has two dogs, a lab/rot cross who’s around 10ish and a sheltie that is about a year now.  The rot is a “growly old b*” to say the least.  She acts just like a crotchety old woman…she doesn’t want anything new around and she isn’t shy about letting them know it.  Ma had a sheltie before, and when the Sarge was younger he didn’t get along with it too well.  Sarge was pretty leery about the dog (T.C.) because tc would growly and carry on when the Sarge went sniffin around.  My dog finally had enough and when tc walked close enough he lunged at him and grabbed him around the neck.  The dog had some crazy fluffy fur and the Sarge got ahold of just fur and not neck…but it scared the hell out of tc.  After that the Sarge knew he got the best of him…so anytime they got close to each other Sarge would try to get a hold of him.  Tc is now dead and there is a new dog there (max) but I’ve done what I can to keep the sarge away from him.  It’s not so much that sarge would necessarily kill him, but tc is a puppy and likes to play and bite…all it would take is sarge getting irritated and the dog would be dead….he’s so small.  So I keep them separated.  It’s a little work…but so far it’s worked out well.

When I brought the dogs to the farm, it was wet and muddy.  I setup their kennel in the garage.  I threw a couple of their large pillows in there and a couple heat lamps (was cold at the time) and things have worked out well.  They seem to “like” it, as much as a dog can like being caged up.  Usually I keep the garage door closed as well, because what they can’t see won’t hurt them.  The Sarge will let off with his “don’t forget about me” bark sometimes, but they are pretty good.  Sometimes I have to have the garage door open while I’m doing stuff outside.  Ma’s dogs might be out and mine are in the kennel…I’ve noticed some interesting things.

My dogs are really chill until someone pisses them off.  Sadie (the lab/rot cross) makes a bee line for the garage when the door is open just so she can bark and carry on at my dogs.  You can’t call her back…can’t make her stop, she’s got it set in her head that she is going to give these dogs a piece of her mind.  Until last night I hadn’t really paid a whole lot of attention to it, I just assumed the dogs were going back and forth between each other.  Last night I decided to let them go at each other and see how it plays out…

Sadie hauls ass to the garage and starts barking, hair standing up looking as fierce as she can.  Grace stands and watches her until she is within about 3 feet of the kennel and then she lets off.  She acts just like those dogs you see in the movies that are going to tear every bit of flesh off your body…she’s up on the cage, hair standing up, teeth out…and it’s not even a bark…it’s some kind of crazy hell fire bark/growl/snarl/I’m a devil dog act that is pretty crazy.  Sadie stands there and barks…gets close to the cage until gracie lets off then barks as she backs up.  Now I’m standing there watching…and the Sarge kinda stops, looks at sadie…and walks to the other side of the cage (more towards me) and looks at me wagging his tail and shaking his ass.  He couldn’t be more disinterested in the “bitch fight” basically.  Now I’m sure that if they were actually fighting and making contact that he’d have jumped in to the fray…but he just didn’t care about all the noise.

So now the females are barking at each other…sadie is backing up…stops barking, looks at me with the “aren’t you going to stop this?” look.  I asked her “you want me to let her out?”  Obviously the dog can’t understand me, but it made me feel better to say it.  Sadie barks a little more…looks at me again and then runs away.  Gracie is still freaking out…right up till she turns and leaves…then she is all calm, wagging her tail looking at me and waiting to be petted…

What I learned from this….Gracie is flat crazy, the Sarge is cool as the other side of the pillow and Sadie is all bark and no bite.

I’m not sure what gracie would do if someone she didn’t know came on the yard when no one else was there.  Apparently at one point she wouldn’t let the UPS man out of the truck (ma was telling me this, I wasn’t home).  Ma came outside, called her back and things were fine.  I’m fine with that…the dog doesn’t know who these people are yet.  As we live there longer she’ll get use to them and will let them walk back and forth.  He was trying to bribe them with dog biscuits, the sarge would eat the biscuit but gracie was back a good 10 feet looking like some hell hound.  That’s something I like about this area compared to town.  If someone comes on my yard in town and the dog defends their territory it’s my fault, here in the country it’s their fault.  ”You shouldn’t have gotten out of the car”.

The dogs make a decent first level deterrent for someone snooping around that shouldn’t be, but if someone is hell bent on getting in your house there is nothing you can do about it.  They will simply shoot the dogs and knock down the door.  Out here, even with some kind of home alarm system you are powerless against someone who is properly motivated.  I believe the same to be essentially true in town, but the response time might be a little quicker with some kind of home alarm.

There is an article on the in-forum about a police dog that was shot.  I read the article, I figured the dog was shot while chasing a suspect or something in the line of duty…nope, not at all.  The dog “escaped” from the owner’s yard and was found shot dead, along with the owner’s other dog, 5 miles from his house.  The article says the dogs escaped from his property as were last seen a short distance south of his property.  They don’t say how far away the “short distance” was, and given the tone of the article I expect it to be pretty close to the 5 miles away they were found.  Now I’m fully on board with the idea that the dogs -probably- did not deserve to be shot. I say probably because we don’t know what they were doing.  Maybe they were being aggressive or something…who knows.  You get the impression they do not normally act that way…but given the right situation any dog can become aggressive and be perceived as a threat.  The dogs probably didn’t deserve to be shot, but the owner deserved the emotional turmoil he is now going through after losing his dogs.  Clearly he was irresponsible because the dogs “escaped”.  He should have had them secured and trained better.  At 7 years old I would expect them to be more well behaved.

One of the main reasons I think they were maliciously killed is because they were shot and dropped somewhere.  I would think if they were being a pest and “needed” to be shot, it would have been reported to the authorities.  Since it’s a small town, it’s possible someone was afraid of reporting it and wanted to dump the animals.  Who knows.  Either way…keep an eye on your dogs and this won’t be a problem.

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‘He didn’t deserve that’; police dog shot and killed near Bagley, Minn.

GRAND FORKS, N.D. – Sgt. Larry Peterson lost quite a bit more than just a K-9 “unit” when someone shot Copper last week and left his body lying along a country road.By: Stephen J. Lee, Grand Forks Herald , Grand Forks Herald

GRAND FORKS, N.D. – Sgt. Larry Peterson lost quite a bit more than just a K-9 “unit” when someone shot Copper last week and left his body lying along a country road.

For one thing, the Bagley, Minn., police veteran also lost Sally, his other dog, who was shot and left apparently by the person or persons.

And he had truly invested in Copper for all seven years the “hound/Lab cross” lived with him. He rescued the pup from the city pound when the woman who found it wandering pleaded with him not to let the pound’s “five-day kill” policy kick in.

In 2005, Peterson brought Copper to training by Winnipeg police experts held in Grand Forks so he could serve as Bagley’s K-9 tracking “officer.” Peterson, not the police department, paid for the training.

They were partners ever since, sharing the same squad car.

Right away, Copper produced.

After A & E Produce in rural Bagley was robbed in October 2005, Copper found the robber in the nearby woods within minutes, as well as some of the shotgun shells the man stole, after he shot one of the store owners in the leg, Peterson said. “That was key evidence,” Peterson said, and led to the man’s conviction.

Besides providing for Copper’s training and his board and room, Peterson also paid for a divider to be fabricated to fit across his squad car so Copper could ride in the back seat.

“I didn’t want the taxpayers responsible,” said Peterson, a 13-year veteran of the force. “Often, the department offered to pay for different stuff, but I just declined, thankfully.”

Police Chief Darin Halverson had been the handler for the small department’s previous K-9 officer, which he ran for about eight years, and some citizens raised issues about the need and use of the dog, Halverson said.

His department has three-full time officers and two part-timers, and budgets have been cut in recent years.

So, Peterson’s way of picking up the tab for Copper was the only way the city would have a K-9 unit.

“Larry footed the bill for everything,” Halverson said of Peterson’s arrangement — gift, really — to the city. “But the city actually purchased the dog from Larry for a dollar, so the city technically owned him, so we covered all the liability.”

But it’s obviously not a dollar deal that gives Peterson the feeling of loss.

The bodies of Copper and Sally were found May 10 about five miles north of Peterson’s house, obviously “dumped” there and killed elsewhere, with a small-caliber gun, Peterson said.

The dogs weren’t known for chasing livestock or deer — legal justifications for shooting stray dogs — and Copper, in fact, was expressly trained not to let such distractions take him from his duty, Peterson said. The last they were seen, the two dogs had gotten loose from his property and were a short distance south of his home May 10, Peterson said.

The Clearwater County Sheriff’s Office is investigating the shootings, and there are no suspects yet.

“I’m not having anything to do with it,” Peterson said. “I don’t want my personal feelings to get in the way.”

Copper was a big, rangy dog, 70 to 75 pounds. Sally was a civilian, also seven, a black Lab/basset hound cross he picked up from the local Humane Society in Beltrami, Minn.

“They were the only dogs I had,” he said. “Both were very gentle dogs.”

That meant they no doubt were easy targets for whoever shot them, Peterson said, unable to keep anger out of his voice.

Many people have commiserated with him and offered to help him find another dog.

But his K-9’s tracks would be hard to fill.

Spending every day, at work or off, with Copper, for seven years, has made this a big loss for Peterson.

“All the lost people we looked for, the cases he played a part in, that was a bad way for him to go down,” Peterson said. “He didn’t deserve that.”

This past holiday weekend we made the trek back to the farmstead.  It’s always a big of a hassle to get out of town and start the drive.  With two women and two dogs away from their house for 4 days…you can imagine the amount of stuff we have to bring with.  To the wife’s credit she is getting better each time with the packing.  She still takes a bit much for my taste, but it is significantly less than she would take when we first started our trips up there.  We bring quite a bit of stuff for the dogs as well.  We always bring them a bucket of food, which I think we’re going to stop doing.  The Sarge seems to do fine with the food the folk’s give their dogs…he used to get some kind of tremors going on, but I think I’ve traced that back to nutrition.  I’ll have to buy my folks a bag of food for their dogs once in awhile and we’ll be square.

The first obstacle once we got to the farm was how my dogs would interact with my mother’s new dog.  Her last dog and Sarge had a bit of a conflict.  For some reason the dog found it’s way into Sarge’s mouth pretty often…I’m pretty sure it had something to do with food and how much of a bully the dog was to Sarge when the Sarge was a puppy.  I don’t think it was so much of a revenge mentality…but I think that started the tension, then the dog wandered in front of the Sarge’s food dish…that set him off and it was on like donkey kong. Read the rest of this entry »