I have been avoiding posting on this thread because it brings up bad memories. I got my 1st bottle calf when I was 5, in the spring sometime, then come November, my grandaddy took me up to the barn, handed me his 32 , and showed me where to shoot it. He said " It is your calf. You need to do it, Ain't much of a man that wont put down his own animals, but wants someone to do it for him." This calf was as much a pet to me as my pony and dog were. I was raised to never let any animal suffer. I had some dogs get run over. Growing up, our house was close to a busy 2-lane highway that was the truck route between two cities. About 20 years ago, they made a 4-lane by-pass behind us, and the traffic is non-existent now by my parents' hous). I had a couple of dogs get run over, and I had to shoot them. My dog..my responsibility.
When I was about 11, I had seen this deer laying just off a trail behind the house, when I was riding my motorcycle. When I got off the bus the next day, I decided to walk down the trail to look at the deer, and try to figure out why it had died. Maybe cut off the tail for a souveneir, so I wore my hunting knife on my belt. I had a dog, half English setter and half beagle, that was probably my favorite dog of al time. Name was Jimbo. He had lagged behind, looking for rabbits, When I go to the deer, there was 3 stray dogs eating on it. Big ole black dogs, with white on their chests. They weren't any of the neighbors' dogs. They were feral, an d people had been seeing them around the are for about a year. I hollered at them to run them off, and they came after me! I ran back down the trail , and met Jimbo , flying past me in a full charge. All 3 of them jumped on him , as savage an attack as I have ever seen. I knew they we gonna kill him. I drew my knife, ran back to the fight, and dove in, slashing and stabbing and even biting. All 5 of us were in a fight to the death. I just stabbed at every thing I saw that was white. I got one real good. It crawled off a little way and eventually bled out. Man who owned the cotton field the trail was by, was on a Hi-Boy and saw what was happening, He had a 22 rifle on it, and came a running, He shot one dog, and the other ran off , bleeding from a dozen stabs, and the man put a 22 round in his back. Later on, I found where the dog had died. He picked me up to carry me to the house, and I raised immortal hell. I didn't want to leave my dog, because I wasn't sure the third dog was coming back or not, and Jimbo was hurt bad. He was laying there whimpering, with most of his guts strung out behind him. Billy ( the man on the Hi-Boy) said " I am sorry son, but Jimbo is hurt bad, and there is nothing anyone can do. You go on to the house....your momma has to carry you to the hospital". I said " No, give me the 22, I will do it" . This was the 2nd hardest thing I had to do in my whole life. When we got to the house, he was telling my momma about what happened, and said " It was unreal, Lena. I have never seen anything like it. If I didn't know better, I'd say Warren was possessed or something,. He was the fiercest one in the fight, and was making the worst sounds...sounded like a lion roaring." Momma asked him where Jimbo was. He said " That little dog saved his life. You can see how bad they were tearing Warren up." Then he told her what happened to Jimbo. He and momma were bawling their eyes out over Jimbo. I just stood there, holding that knife for dear life. I wouldn't put it down. Momma had called my grandparents to come stay with my little brother while she carried me to the ER. My grandaddy asked me to let him hold the knife til I got back, so I gave it to him. About fifty stitches and I had to get a shot in my stomach every day for 21 days, in case they had rabies.
Like I said in an earlier post on another thread, I will NOT carry a cow with a broken bone to the sale barn. If something happened to one of ours, and it was cold weather, we'd shoot it where it lay, and then drag it to the barn and gut and skin it, then carry it to a butcher. In hot weather, we'd drag it to the bone yard with a tractor. My grand paw always said that a sob that need a few dollars that bad, the he'd let one stand suffering with a broken bone, til sale day, then load it up , make it move around in the barn til it sold, then maybe spend a day or so on a trailer til it finally got killed, had no business being in the cow business, if he was that broke. I have had to put down a couple of horses and a dog or two that were very special to me, but I was NOT going to let a stranger, even a vet, do it. Yes, it is hard, but animals are not people. I may have shed a tear or two over a dog or a horse, but next day , you are ok. It is not like a friend or family dying. What is hard, is having a brother that you have put your life in his hands, and he has put his in yours, hit a trip line and suddenly he is gone from his belt down. Laying in a jungle half way around the world, screaming in pain, begging us to please shoot him. and the fear in his eyes shows worse than even the pain. And you get his, yours, , and the rest of the team's, morphine packs and give it all to him at one time. And, even though you know you did the right thing, you have to live with that the rest of your life. Trust me, having to put down your favorite dog or horse, pales in comparison.
