The dog park across the street again

This woman let her dog out of the dog park without a leash. the dog ran across the road to my pasture fence and scared the sheep and turkeys inside that fence away from the fence. The dog then ran down my fence, through my gate and started chasing the turkeys it found about 100' down my driveway. The woman didn't attempt to pursue the dog at all. The dog was tearing feathers off the turkeys and the main reason that it didn't kill any of them was that it couldn't figure out which one it wanted to start with.

I grabbed my rifle, stood on a pile of logs and took aim at the dog attacking my livestock. I fired a shot into the ground close to it, and it froze when it heard the gunshot. If the dog had not stopped the attack the second shot would have been into its head.

I took a couple of steps closer to the dog with the intent of grabbing it and it started after the turkeys again. A second shot got it to stop again, and it took another shot for me to get close enough to the dog to grab it by the collar, about an acre or so into my property.

Rifle in one hand and dog in the other, I met the dogs owner 25' inside my gate. "I'm sorry that my dog got out of the fence". "lady, the only reason I didn't shoot your dog today was that it stopped attacking when I fired near it. It would have been easier to shoot it and let you remove the dead dog. Keep your dog on a leash until you're INSIDE the dog park, and put it on a leash before you leave the dog park. This is an agricultural area. Respect that. "

I talked to Chris Newman, who is running the dog park, and explained I'd had another dog related incident. This is the 6th one. "Bruce, I've told people to keep their dogs on lease, I'd support you if you shot one". I've asked him to put a better fence up on his side, but he thinks that the current dog park fence is enough.

I don't think that most folks who take their dogs to an offleash area consider they may lose their dog as a result. I don't like being the bad guy here, but I've done about all I can do. I've been clear, I've spent $4,000 on fencing, and I've lost livestock.

Maybe I should just start shooting them.

The dog park across the street

There's a fellow who leased the land across the road from my farm gate and has made a free off-leash dog park there. It's been very popular, and now there's traffic jams and cars parked on both sides of the road as people take their dogs to the park and use it.

So today I drove up and saw a woman let two dogs out of her car without a leash. The dogs saw turkeys inside my fence, and immediately ran down the fenceline, through the bars of my gate and into my property, chasing the turkeys. One of the dogs was a labrador, the other was a border collie.

It only takes a few seconds for a medium-sized dog to kill a turkey, or injure it enough that it won't survive, and the turkeys that these dogs were after are my only bourbon red toms. If I lost them I won't have any bourbon red poults this year. Finding adult heritage breed turkeys for breeding this time of year is very difficult, and the window for poults is pretty small. If I lost the birds I might not have a crop of that kind of turkey.

So I took all that in while I was opening the car door and sprinting towards the woman. "GET YOUR FXXXING DOGS. CATCH YOUR DOGS. GET YOUR DOGS OUT OF HERE!!", I yelled, and then realized that she didn't have them under control and wasn't doing anything to get them under control. She was watching them chase my turkeys. They weren't responding to her in any way.

She's standing there watching her dogs. "GET YOUR DOGS. I AM GOING TO SHOOT YOUR DOGS. GO GET THEM NOW!". I ran back to my truck and grabbed my rifle, and turned around and ran back to the gate. At this point, with the rifle in my hands, she's doing something. She's running towards Andrea, "Please don't shoot my dog!! Please". Andrea managed to grab one of her dogs to prevent it from grabbing a turkey, but the woman thought that Andrea was bringing the dog over to me to be shot. "GET YOUR DOG NOW OR I WILL HAVE TO SHOOT IT. RUN! GO!" The other dog noticed that the first dog was being held, and turned around, and the woman was able to go grab it. "PLEASE DON'T SHOOT MY DOGS!"

Keep your fxxxing dogs out of my property. I raise animals, and if your dog kills one of my breeding turkeys I'll have to spend another year waiting for another one. "But I always keep my dogs on leash!" They're not on leash now. I don't want any excuses. If I find your dogs on my property chasing or killing my livestock I will shoot them. Keep your dogs on leash until you get inside the dog park fence. "But I don't want you to shoot my dogs". I don't want to either. Keep your dogs under your control, and if you can't, learn to control your dogs.

The fence around the offleash area is that orange plastic construction netting, that's 30" tall. It's short enough that a medium sized dog can jump right over it. So even if the dogs are inside the "offleash area" they're still able to get out. Guess I've got to talk to the guy about the offleash area perimeter fence.

The best part of this is if I ended up shooting one of these dogs killing my livestock that I'd show up in the local paper. "Evil farmer kills cute puppies". Love that.