Police Shoot Another Dog. Good.

A fuss is being made. A family says it is like losing their child. Here's VFD's off-the-cuff take on the latest COP-shoots-dog story being reported on the radio news:

Family has labrador retriever off-leash in the front yard, with an electric fence to restrain the dog.

No signs announce the presence of the fence.

Said dog has the habit of barking and charging when anyone comes around

A warrant needed to be served. This is a duty of the Police and a requirement for a stable society.

The person to be served no longer lived there, but the COP didn't know that.

COP approaches, and is charged by a bigass barking dog.

BANG

Family is on charges for having the dog off-leash

Family is all upset that their like-a-child-who-has-an-electronic-restraint dog is now dead

Officer Dave says: if your bigass barking dog is charging at me, and I don't see any restraint on it (leash, chain, etc) then your dog is about to be a bigass dead dog. Sorry. Oh, and here's a warrant for your arrest, which is why I came around in the first place.

If it's a little yip-dog, I might consider OC spray instead, but a big dog is a mindless killing machine until proved otherwise. It's up to responsible dog owners to restrain their dogs out of the house.

Come on VFD, a mindless killing machine? A frikken LAB?!

If you have a strong stomach, click this here. Much like a person with a knife, a dog can inflict up to and including deadly wounds on as little as zero notice. As in the case of a person with a knife, an officer is under no obligation to suffer bodily harm himself before eliminating an imminent threat to his own or someone else's well-being. Nobody told him the dog was going to stop short, roll over on his back, and wag his tail. If you've got over 40lbs of this coming at you, it's a deadly threat, regardless of how the dog's master or the local residents feel about the matter after the fact. Based on what I know at the moment, this was a Good Shoot.

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I'm a certified dog lover. I don't recall a time when my family didn't have at least one dog, from six to a hundred and six pounds. I have dogs. LB has and loves dogs also, but when I told him about this story, he said that sometimes a COP has to send 'em back to Hell. NP is convinced he could fight off a dog. He admitted to never having play-rassled (let alone actually fought) with a dog, but that was obvious when he started talking about fighting one off. You can't fight off a full grown dog, and you shouldn't be expected to try, if one appears to be attacking and you've got a little friend handy.