"Man" shoots Golden Retriever with BB Gun

[skunkstripe]

I know I should not be prejudiced about people's appearances, but when I saw this kid I could not help but think he does not have all his marbles.

http://www.fosters.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070131/FOSTERS01/101310215

[brunosmom]

What was the guy doing with the pellet gun in the first place.....shooting cans? Nice picture of the guy......lol Wonder if he is going to court like that...(blue hair)

[vagreys]

Interesting spin on the story. The community has a leash law. The dog was running loose and off the premises. It was digging in trash. The shooter had felt threatened by the dog on two other occasions. This time, he had his child with him, when the dog starting running toward him. The fact that the dog is running loose despite a leash law is dismissed because no one has complained. I wonder how different the story might have been spun, if the dog involved, doing exactly the same thing, had been a bully breed?

[skunkstripe]

We are funny up here about our "leash" laws. It does not always means a physical leash. The town where I have my business has a "leash law" which states that a dog must be on a leash or under responsible supervision. In other words, if my dog is walking by my side and obeys my commands, I fulfil the leash law even if there is no "leash".

Make sense?

But I do agree with you about breed prejudice. I am amazed at what Sophia gets away with and often wonder if a bully could go bounding up to total strangers and even jump on them without them going beserk. BTW I do NOT encourage this, what happens is that people see her and egg her on to come over to them.

[eilenej1]

Interesting spin on the story. The community has a leash law. The dog was running loose and off the premises. It was digging in trash. The shooter had felt threatened by the dog on two other occasions. This time, he had his child with him, when the dog starting running toward him. The fact that the dog is running loose despite a leash law is dismissed because no one has complained. I wonder how different the story might have been spun, if the dog involved, doing exactly the same thing, had been a bully breed?

And I wonder what would have been done if the dogs were not famous and the guy didn't have blue hair! :p The dog would probably be in trouble - not the blue haired guy!

[skunkstripe]

OK my opinion is that the kid is lying.

He claims that the dog had bothered him twice before, but he never filed a complaint. According to this
http://www.wptz.com/wnne/10882285/detail.html
he was 20 ft away from the dog when he fired. Isn't that a little TOO convenient? I mean, if you are going somewhere where a dog has bothered you before, do you bring a BB gun "just in case"? What you see up in this area is a bunch of fool kids like this one who shoot BB guns for the sheer whoop-de-do of it and sometimes get into trouble. I think that is what happened here, he was out shooting beer cans or something and thought it would be cute to shoot the dog.

[eilenej1]

Interesting. The 1st article didn't seem to mention he was 20 feet away - or I missed it. But you do have to admit that sometimes people are deemed guilty just because they look different. Probably not the case in this instance though!

[vagreys]

Actually, in the first article, I think the shooter says he was about 10 feet away. I can't say whether the guy was lying or not. Appearances aside, I can only go by what was reported. Look carefully at the original article. The facts are somewhat buried in the spin. Is this father being called a liar because he looks like a punk? Is it because he was out plinking with his son in gun-phobic New York? Is the owner of the dog off the hook, allowed to let his dogs run loose and not under control, because he is a prominent businessman and the dogs appear in TV ads? Is the dog innocent because he is a Golden?

Food for thought, for those of us who look a little rough, human or hound.

[LesterJ]

I see a whole lotta problems with the story also. Can anyone just carry a BB handgun anywhere? The dog should have been contained somehow on the property--fenced in at least. The dealership was not taking very good care of the dog if he was digging in the trash. The man should have avoided walking his child in that area if he'd faced being attacked *twice* before. It's hard to discern the victim in this case.

I totally agree that if this had been a different breed of dog (bully type), the spin would/could have been different. And no, the guy isn't doing his credibility in this case any favours with his blue hair, although that's just a personal lifestyle choice. And if he's not a real "dog person", it is possible that he "could" have been frightened from 20ft away, although the fact that he was packing a BB gun in the first place makes me think there was some premeditation.

[Jake2006]

With regard to appearances, we do stereotype - sometimes its the only information we have. It can save our lives. Students of health and social work are encouraged not to stereotype and some have really come a cropper.
That's another issue.

Vagreys you are so right though. And the media can put whatever spin on they wish. Oh and they do use so many metaphors too!

[skunkstripe]

Tom, this is not gun-phobic New York, this is Yankee redneck New Hampshire, where "kids" about that age routinely engage in what is refered to as "target practice" ("horsing around with weapons" might be more appropriate).
In the town where I live, not too long ago a kid I happen to know personally ended up paralyzed from the waist down because he and his buddy were having "target practice" using real guns, not BB. He now suing the parents of the friend who shot him because the kid supposedly had ADHD and he claims that the parents should not have let him be shooting weapons. The fact that he had been playing with guns with his buddy for several years gets conveniently forgotten. This kind of thing happens all the time up here and it is one of the things I really dislike about northern New England.

Anyway, my reasons for saying that IMO he is lying are:
If he really had been bothered by this dog and worried about his son, why had he not filed a complaint?
What was he doing with the BB gun? There was this info:
"It is unclear if the shooting was an accident. Several cans and spent BBs were found in the woods behind the dealership at what appeared to be a makeshift shooting range." http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/16691154/ (sorry I forgot to post that one)

So you have a makeshift shooting range out behind the apartments, and the guy claims the dog started to run toward them in an unfriendly manner so he shot in self defense? I don't know if you have ever had a stange dog rummaging through your trash (we have) but I can tell you the ones that I have seen do it had to be persuaded to leave. Standard practice up here in the woods is to use a BB gun. However, most people will not shoot in the face, they will shoot in the hind end. And by all accounts this was an extremely people-friendly dog. I think he was either horsing around or trying to scare off the dog, and did not mean to shoot the dog in the face. The self-defense story was something he came up with after he got caught.

[vagreys]

Sorry, Skunk. I thought the story was from Rochester, NY. I was referring to the story's spin, not your opinion (to which you are perfectly and reasonably entitled). Obviously, they thought he was lying, too, because they've brought him up on charges that could get him locked away from his family for a year.

[skunkstripe]

Sorry I did not mention it was in NH. I heard this on the radio this AM and checked to see what was in the internet about it. I figured you all know that I am up here in northern New England.

Since he contacted the owner and offered to may for the vet bills they are unlikely to lock him away. In this state you are allowed the use of deadly force in self defense (and the use of deadly force to remove an intruder from your home) so his invoking self-defense really would have gotten him off the hook if it were true. But he isn't going to have any friends at that apartment complex if his neighbors think he might be shooting their pets. All in all I think it was an amazingly dumb thing for him to do.

[golden-lover]

Geez, I also think it would've been a bit different if it was a bully breed. They have enough confidence that they might actually have bitten that guy after he provoked it by firing a bullet into its muzzle. I'm glad it was a golden though. A rottweiler would have been the victim if it was one no matter if it didn't do anything.