Is this the wild frontier or the inner city?

[duck hunt]

So, yesterday morning, my cat was killed by a pack of wild dogs in my own backyard. Ghetto dogs. Right here in the heart of Richmond.

God bless Shin-Tao. I don't know what I would have done without him. Probably just stood in the yard and screamed. He ran down the stairs, chased the dogs off with a broom, wrapped Bosco in a towel and put him in his carrier. We raced him to the vet but he died on the table. There was nothing they could do.

As attacks by packs of wild dogs go, he didn't have it too bad. There was no blood and I think the shock kept him from being in too much pain. He meowed once on the way to the vet -- not a cry, just one good meow. Thank God we were here or he would have been ripped to pieces.

Shin says he grabbed the shotgun first, then thought better of it and went with the broom. A friend we saw last night said, "Studies show that, in dealing with packs of wild dogs, shotguns are eighty percent more effective than brooms." Shin's response: "Yes, but studies also show that shotguns are eighty percent more likely than brooms to draw a disapproving response from city police."

I know this is borderline off-topic but I just wanted to praise Shin-Tao some more. He raced to the aid of a cat who has given him nothing but grief for the past two years. A cat who used his body armor as a litterbox. I know that Bosco felt protected during his last few moments, because in his eyes, Shin Tao was the meanest animal on earth. For him,it was probably like being scooped up and rescued by the Terminator. I think he went to kitty heaven feeling very safe.

So, to stay on topic, what do you think the response would have been if he'd shot the dogs? Remember, we're right here in the neighborhood that spawned Project Exile. Defensible, or no?

[Dead]

Well seeing how the dogs turned on Shin Tao, when he was rescuing your kitty.. ummmm he would have had no choice but to shoot them....

[John/az2]

Duck Hunt,

I feel for you and your cat, I've had them most of my life and find their company very rewarding.

Pity you didn't have a silenced .308, but thank goodness the cooler head of Shin-Tao prevailed. Considering your living environment, the broom was probably the best thing. I do believe that the defense of a cat would not have won the day in court...

[Doc Hudson]

First of all, let me join in the praise of Shin-Tao. Well done sir. Coming to the aid of a friend is a mark of great distinction.

Second let me suggest that both of you acquire and keep near the door a substantial club of some sort, whether baseball bat, length of 1" galvanized pipe, or 2x4. Either will be much more effective in dealing with dog packs than broom handles.

As far as dog attacks go, cities are just as dangerous and the country. Perhaps more so. At least in the country, feral dogs have an opportunity to hunt wild game and livestock. In cities, if feral dogs can not find enough rats, nor scrounge enough from dumpsters, they quickly turn to pets and people.

I am not a cat fancier, but you have my sympathy for the loss of your pet. Thank God the dogs did not attack you or Shin-Tao. If you have not filed a complaint/report with the police and animal control, you should do so now. It sounds to me that steps must be taken quickly to eradicate or reduce the number of feral dogs in your area before a human is attacked and killed.

Regards,
Doc Hudson

[C.R.Sam]

Good headwork on the part of Shin-Tao.

I am sorry about your loss.

Sam

[Poodleshooter]

Odd. I'm just an hour west of y'all in the city of Charlottesville. Yesterday as I was toting two shotguns out to my truck to go trap shooting, 2 small dogs from my apartment complex were attacked by a larger stray that occassionally wanders around. I had the shotguns uncased, but decided not to get involved. The owners soon resolved the problem and chased the stray off. Aren't we supposed to have animal control people around? I mean, when I lived with my parents, subsonic .22's were warranted, but since that would get me arrested now, shouldn't the city be handling this stuff???
Ah, well. Time to move methinks.

[Bogie]

Here in St. Louis, we recently had a child killed by a pack of feral dogs... And my neighborhood, which is adjacent to a large park, is subject to 'em... College kids at Washington University (which tends to get kids from New Yawrk and Lawn Guyland who couldn't get into a real school...) get pets, and then when they go home, they dump 'em... They've even had problems at the zoo with 'em running down the animals...

I ran up against a pack of six or eight last summer, about two in the morning... Ended up backing slowly into my apartment complex with a spyder knife out and ready - I figured I could gut at least one of 'em... Scared the hell outta me... Misery doesn't allow CCW, so I've since gone and got a big ol' can of bear spray...

[Betty]

Yuck! I hope your kitty is okay. On the news in Nashville awhile back, they reported on packs of stray dogs moving in too. When I lived in Columbia, TN, I would hear a pack of them in the distance, and sometimes they would be in the front yard in the middle of the night.

[Redlg155]

I would suggest a big ol buffet of irresistable meat balls laced with cyanide with some Jim Jones cool aid for refreshment (also known in the critter world as antifreeze)!

But seriously..and I was kinda serious about the above..hehe..
I'm sorry to hear about your cat. Good luck on calling animal control to deal with the problems. We once called animal control and the traps they set caught more of the neighbours kids than dogs. I've had to take matters in my own hands more than once with a wrist rocket type slingshot. Accurate and packs one heck of a punch. If it doesn't kill em, it makes for nice negative reinforcement to not visit your yard.

[Dave P]

Must be those dang sun spots, cause I had 3 large dogs wandering around my place yesterday, too! Never seen them before. Appeared friendly, but I told the kids to stay away!

[Wallew]

Valiant effort, Shin Tao. Duck Hunt, through veiled tears, I mourn your loss of a family member.

What could you have done that MAY NOT have ired the LEO's? Keep a loaded pellet gun around. You might be surprised the results, and MOST LEO's don't view predator animal control with a pellet gun quite so darkly as if you had used even a .22. Something about it's propelled by springs or air, not gun powder that makes this difference. Though I will admit, some LEO's frown on even pellet guns. A CO2 powered BB pistol works equally well. And makes less noise than the pellet gun. And costs less too.

[johnbt]

I'm sorry to hear about the death of your cat. I've had mine chased by dogs, but so far have been lucky.

Just out of curiosity, what part of Richmond? I'm near Benedictine High School and the VA Museum and have had much more of a problem with people than animals.

John

P.S. - We have animal control here?

[Bogie]

Wrist rocket with .58 cal (or bigger if you can get 'em...) muzzleloader balls...

I know that .45s will go right through 1" pine...

[mussi]

If you can legally get sound moderators where you live, get one and
subsonic .22s.

Sounds like a pellet gun, with the usual result of a dead dog. Else,
get a crossbow. These hunting bolts kill quickly and efficiently. Else
get a good recurve or compound bow - stray animals are about as dead
when they get hit by an arrow.

Use broadheads at all costs, they're the equivalent to hollowpoints.

[duck hunt]

Well, dang, John! We used to be neighbors!

I lived across the street from the Carytown post office for four years. We just moved in July. We live in "West Manchester" -- it's the grey area between Blackwell and Westover Hills. We never had animal problems there -- course, he was an indoor cat then because I was in an apartment. Here, I was so happy to have a big yard for him.

Wish I'd known we were so close. We could have had a TFL gathering at Nacho Mama's.

[Robert Teesdale]

To All:

As I type this, I'm sitting at my desk with a large laceration/bruise combo on my left calf, courtesy of my neighbor's 110-pound Weimeraner.

Some background... we live in an apartment/condo complex, with a large private park behind it. Dogs run free there; they can be off-leash if you can keep it under voice control. Both of mine are almost always unleashed, since they do as they're told (unless doggie sex is involved )

The couple who owns the Weimeraner know it's vicious; they rarely, if ever, have it off leash. It's attacked my dogs on several occasions, mostly because the female of the couple which owns it, isn't strong enough to hold it back. Frustrating.

Yesterday, when I went outside with my dogs - I noticed the Weimeraner wasn't leashed. I called my dog, and shouted "STAY" at him - and he did, albeit on growling and angry point. I was about two feet from seizing his collar when the Weimeraner raced in and attacked.

Now picture me, holding an 80-pound Husky/Chow mix with my left, a 110-pound Weimeraner by the right, and trying to keep them separate. The girl refused to help - instead, she stood there screaming until her boyfriend heard, and came out. Then he tells me that my dog is vicious.

What nonsense. My dog is a service animal (hearing dog) and has never started a fight in his life. A few sharp words were exchanged, and he hauled his dog inside.

Everyone who lives in the four/five complexes around the park, knows my dogs as friendly - and this idiot's dog as a menace. Had some interesting conversations out there yesterday evening, showing off my leg.

The upshot?

The Sheriff's department came, took pictures of my leg, and said that Animal Control would come and confiscate the Weimeraner, and keep in in quarantine until it's been verified as rabies-free, etc.

Next time it bites someone, it gets put down - and the owner charged under vicious animal statutes.

All I can think is that I'm relieved it was my dog that was attacked - and not my toddler son.

While holding them apart, it raced through my mind that the Weimeraner might turn on me. Had it, I was prepared to open my Spyderco and gut the damn thing on the spot. I thought about it while holding onto the snarling, snapping beast as the owner refused to help - but decided not to, thinking that the fact it wasn't attacking me meant that I'd end up in court for eviscerating it.

Any comments from folks?

Best regards,

Robert Teesdale
http://www.teesdale.com

[George Hill]

Medal of Valor to Shin Tao...

Dog packs need to be dispatched - especially ghetto variations due to the fact of higher levels of Pitt Bull DNA. I hate Pitt Bulls.
Cat one day and children the next.
Some may argue that - but there are many Pitt Bull attacks that either kill the child or leave the child mutilated.

I am certain if it was a child - Shin would have grabbed the Shotgun. Of that - there is no question.

I am sorry to here about the Cat. I like cats.

[Thibault]

Sorry to hear about the cat. I'm perhaps more related to cats than people. Having to put my cat to sleep last year broke my heart. By a strange kind of masochism, I own a dog: nothing too big and/or mean, a 45 to 50 pounds ball of happiness and stupidity.
A few years ago, I was at my mother's place one morning and there was a raccoon midway up in a tree, with a bunch of children throwing rocks at it (-CENSORED--CENSORED--CENSORED-???).
I dispersed the kids, using rather coarse language, then proceeded to get whatever authorities to do something about the 'coon... Whoa! I explained over and over, while being given the runaround by four different agencies, that the kids would eventually be back and that 'coon might eventually end up biting somebody... Here's more or less what I got:

1- The cops wouldn't do anything (none of their business!) unless someone gets bitten (DUH!) and they had evidence of rabies...
2- The town wouldn't do anything unless the 'coon would damage property...
3- South shore SPCA wouldn't do anything since it was on a statutory holiday... they actually asked me to call back on Monday...(Double-DUH!)
4- Montreal city SPCA, to which all three other agencies "redirected" me to, wouldn't do anything because it wasn't on their turf..................

So I spent the day on a raccoon watch, couldn't shoot the thing in downtown Longueil, until it finally got away to a nearby thrash can and proceeded to inventorize its content...

God I hate the city!

[Mike Irwin]

Remember...

99% of the time it's not the dog that's the problem, it's the owner.

[Don Gwinn]

If it was a child, there would have been nothing anyone could say about the shotgun. It sucks that people would be bothered by using one "just" to save a cat, but if it makes you feel any better, the shotgun wouldn't have done anything about your cat's condition.

Bogie's right about the case in St. Louis. I'm not far from there and it's all we heard about for a long time. I'm told the police had to ask the mother where her son was because she hadn't bothered to look for him even though he'd been gone for two days (dead, as it turns out, of horrible wounds.) She thought he'd turn up sooner or later. Some people aren't worth a bullet.

[Jim V]

I like cats. Feral animals, rural or urban, need to be put down soonest. A inexpensive .22 bolt action rifle with the Ageila .22 subsonic rounds do not make any noise that can be heard mor than 15 - 20 feet, if there is any back ground noise at all. I have "tested" the combo in my backyard. No one knew I had fired a round.


Remember the west's wolf solution: shoot, shovel and shutup. It works in the city too.

[Bogie]

A friend of mine breeds show-champion American Staffordshire terriers... Commonly known as pit bulls... They're really nice dogs, UNLESS they've been mistreated, either by people who intend to fight 'em, or by people, often in the recreational pharmaceutical black market, who abuse them as "guard" dogs. She places the non-show-quality pups with people who she knows will not fight 'em - I'll be getting one in a year or so. Had one friend with a dog that was part chow, part husky, part lab, and part amstaff. Looked like a very stocky and muscular lab, friendly as all getout, great with kids, and would play tug'o'war all day long...

You've been watching too much TV... Next thing you know, you'll be going on about how assault rifles are bad...

[Oleg Volk]

I'd use a handgun and fired straight on: so long as the dogs were facing me, that would have qualified as self-defense. There's no way to know if the pack would have gone for the human after killing hte cat. G21 or G17 ought to have enough magazine capacity to at least slow the three dogs down a bit. Would probably cause hearing damage to the human though.

[ds1973]

The worst underlying theme to this is that "I would have got involved, but isn't the town supposed to control this".

I'm not criticizing anyone for saying this, because I too would not discharge a gun to save a cat or dog if I thought I was going to have to go to court, etc..

My problem is that the "anti-individualists, pro-big-government" people have made it impossible for people to step in and solve problems. You get involved and you have to face legal consequences so the government has to set up an office to deal with the problem and of course, is never there when the problem arises, only to mop up afterwards.

sorry about the rant....

[fmjcafe]

Sorry to hear about your cat Duck Hunt.Cold Steel markets what they call a Sjambok.It`s used in S.Africa as a riot control weapon.It consists of a length of extruded plastic with a red plastic handle.It tapers from about 2" at the butt down to about 1/2"at the tip and are available in 3 lengths the longest being 41".I bet it would be real effective as a dog (or people)defense weapon.They cost less then $10 when I got mine a couple years ago.