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_io me eoiior.
An open letter to the neighbor who shot my dog:
The way you tell it, you came home, and she was there, with a friend, standing over the dead body of one of your goats; two pregnant does, within days of giving birth, were nearby, wounded. You walked into your house, picked up your gun, came out, and shot both dogs dead.
I don’t know whether she did the killing and wounding; nor do you. But you killed her anyway. I don’t believe you thought about it for a second. It was a knee-jerk reaction to what you saw as wanton destruction of your property. I imagine you were ragingly angry.
I would have been ragingly angry also. I may even have felt like killing the perpetrators. Had they been stray dogs, down from the mountains, out to kill for food, with no owners from whom to exact justice, I might even have been tempted to shoot at them, in an attempt to frighten them so badly that they would not come back. But, as you know, this was not the scenario that confronted you. These were dogs that you knew' belonged to close neighbors; dogs whose owners you knew; dogs you knew were pets.
How sad that we have got to the point where we cannot solve problems by communicating, but that our first instinct is to reach for a gun.
I would have understood completely had you confronted me with the crime that had been committed, and held me responsible. I would have heard your rage and felt remorse for what Raffles had done. I would have compensated you financially for your loss, and taken every measure possible to ensure that nothing like that ever happened again. But I was not given the chance; more importantly. Raffles was not given a chance. She was tried, convicted and sentenced in one act of rage.
Let me tell you a little about Raffles. Raffles had lived here with
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