I had to run to Fancy Farm earlier tonite. I had to get some more milk for my visiting grandson. It was going to be a quick trip. Anyway, Jimmy and John were on the tractor and gator going up to start mowing some grass hay. I told Jimmy not to because we had gotten a lot of rain this afternoon. I was afraid that he would have a breakdown and I’d have to hear about it.
My border collie, Blue, was standing in the middle of the road. He knew that the tractor and the gator were moving and it was his job to make sure that they got to where they were supposed to go. He’s a natural born herder. He herds everything. He herds cows and horses and cats and tractors and cars. He doesn’t chase them. He will lay in the ditch and wait for a car to come by. He will make sure that the car is going the way it needs to and once it goes by then he resumes his spot in the ditch. He doesn’t chase cars, he just makes sure that they are going the right way. In fact, he’s been known to try to herd me by nipping at my heels when I go for a walk.
I don’t walk up the road anymore. A couple of years ago my neighbor got a Rottweiler pup that would come running at me when I was walking by. My neighbor told me that he was harmless, that he was a pup. And he wouldn’t move off of their property. But the bigger he got the fewer times I would walk up the road. It just unnerved me. The pup wasn’t out all the time, they kept him in the house. But when he was he scared me.
I was on my way home from work earlier and there were about 5 big, scary dogs surrounding my brother-in-law’s beagle in the middle of the road in front of my neighbor’s house. I didn’t know they had that many dogs. And they wouldn’t move. I thought about running them all down but I’m not that kind of person. As I got out of the car at my house there were several horns honking. I figured the dogs were still in the road. I didn’t think any more about it.
When I got home from running to the store, that beagle was at the house. He seems to stay at my house anymore. Anyway, my border collie was under the car. I noticed right away that he was bleeding close to his chest, high on his leg. I went over to him but he wouldn’t come out from underneath the car. He was panting and breathing heavy. I figured that he had gotten hit out on the road or got in the path of the gator or something. It didn’t seem real bad but I didn’t know if that was the only place he was hurt.
I like to think of our house as dog purgatory. They come here for a little while before they get to go onto heaven. We believe strongly that dogs shouldn’t be penned up or chained up or anything like that. We believe that a farm dog deserves to run the farm. And since our farm is on both sides of the road sometimes they get hit. Usually if they last 2 or 3 years they’re not going to die on the road. They get smart. Unless of course they are a lab and have to take off 90 miles an hour ahead of a tractor crossing the road. They don’t listen to reason. We have had a problem with losing cats too. They are usually house cats that commit suicide right after they are fixed. It seems the minute we have them fixed and declawed they can’t wait to sneak outside and sit in the road until they are run over. Anyway, …
When I got in the house I asked the kids if they knew that Blue was hurt. Katie met me at the door with the peroxide and some gauze. She told me that the neighbor’s dogs came over on our property and surrounded and attacked Blue. I was furious. Not nearly as furious as John. He was going to shoot that pack of dogs. He saw the whole thing happen.
We live in the country. If there is a problem with neighbors dogs we are supposed to work it out with our neighbors. We used to have another border collie that was seriously scared of storms. The place he felt safest was under our neighbors house. Back then they has huskies in the house. But anytime our dog was up there those huskies went crazy. They would call us and tell us that Henry was up there and we would head up there to get him. We would head out in the storm and bring him home. We came home one afternoon, after a storm and Henry was gone, never to be found again. Our neighbors said they hadn’t seen him.
I knew people who called the sheriff about the neighbor’s dog and the sheriff said that if the dog came on their property that they could shoot it. I always thought that was cruel. Tonight I didn’t think that. Tonight I wished that I had run the dogs over when I had the chance.