Dog lovers should take heart in a three Judge Appeals Court ruling today that upheld District Court Judge Jacklyn Connly's guilty finding for "cruelty to an animal" after a Hatfield resident shot a neighbor's sheepdog that had wandered onto his property.
The man essentially said the violent act was necessary to protect his wife, who has multiple sclerosis, from stepping on dog feces.
And that the shot to the dogs hindquarters from a 22 caliber air powered pellet gun was only meant to "sting" her and scare her away.
Of course if I had been the prosecutor I would have asked the perp to borrow the gun in question and let me shoot him in the ass from 50 feet to ascertain whether it was cruel or not.
Cruel as opposes to simply leaving a dish of antifreeze for the dog to find?
ReplyDeleteCruel asa compred to the stuff shot as UM students?
Amherst police are not armed with pellet guns (or tasers).
ReplyDeleteAnon 1:41 the Umass students you are talking about were drunken fools. This was a house pet nitwit.
ReplyDeleteAnon 1:41 needs to be bunk mates with the dog abuser.
ReplyDeleteDOGS LIVES MATTER # !!!!!
ReplyDeleteDogs lives do matter but I suspect you are being disingenuous! Cretan!
ReplyDelete*cretin
ReplyDeleteI do not condone shooting dogs. But we make less of a stink about the tens of thousands of human lives aborted every year. Mostly black ones. The dog will live.
ReplyDeleteAnon 9:36, and so will the idiots your talking about.
ReplyDeleteBB guns are for giving squirrels attitude adjustments.
ReplyDeleteNo...I meant someone from Crete! Yeeeeesh..lol
ReplyDeleteI wonder if they even get as much as 1% of animal abusers into the courts, my sense is 0.1%. And this does not even count the abusers that abuse indirectly, like those that attend zoos or those that eat food without knowing the source...which often include children, parents and schools....and they pay to have the animals locked up, abused and then specifically to be told this is not the case.
ReplyDeleteGlad this guy was caught, but we know animal abusers are rarely caught.....and that animals are poseesions that can be killed at any time at the discretion of the owner and with better lies, by neighbors. I believe if you want to put your dog down, the same court would let you simply shoot or drown the dog.....you do not need permission, oversight or otherwise...
So the question for the reporter is....what is the real state of animal abuse locally...the answer is likely rampant, like everywhere else.
My sense is that this dog was treated better than a human who does not reregister their dog....