Small Town Life (Madness Takes Its Toll)

Why do they keep trying to kill my dogs? Duke found parts of a dead deer on his walk yesterday morning and ate some of the meat before my husband could stop him. Next to the deer was a dead coyote.

(Some farmers like to kill coyotes by putting out poisoned animal meat for the coyotes to find. Some "hunters" like to put out non-poisoned animal meat in order to attract coyotes so they can shoot them.)

Since my husband could not tell how the coyote died he rushed Duke home and forced two tablespoons of hydrogen peroxide down his throat to make him throw-up. Then Duke took a ride with me to the vet and had a syringe full of activated charcoal paste squeezed down his gullet in order to absorb any poison that he may have ingested. That he liked. They must put a flavoring in it that is very appealing to dogs.

While I was doing this my husband was taking a sheriff's deputy to where Duke had found the coyote and the deer parts to bring them back to town so the game warden could examine them. We don't know the outcome yet but Duke is doing find this morning. I hate that we put Duke through all that when it may not have been needed but, as they say, better safe than sorry.

And if that wasn't enough to really, really make me want to get the hell out of this town an article in local paper this week added to my anger. A couple living in the county south of us was arrested and charged with fourteen counts of animal cruelty when they left their horses without adequate food or water for "several weeks." Sheriff's deputies found ten starving horses and four dead horses on the couple's property. The first thing the deputies did when they arrived was to run a hose to the water tanks for the living horses before loading them up into horse trailers to take them to a vet clinic. This paragraph in the news article almost made me cry:

Deputy _________ said when he went in to give one some water the horse thought he was going to take the little water he had and tried to bite him.

The owners could not say they did not realize the horses were starving to death since their house was on a hill overlooking the corrals. The man still tried to justify his actions by telling the sheriff that the horses were sick and he could not afford to feed them. The article pointed out that the couple had lived in a house right across from the corrals but had just moved to their new modular house on top of the hill. The vet who looked at the horses said that although the horses were malnourished they were not injured and he expected them to do well once they gained their weight back.

What is wrong with some people?