Here's another side of the story- A few years ago in our town a policeman was walking down the street to visit with some folks, which is isn't unusual in this town as community policing is the charter here and we get along well with our police department . In any case, a yellow lab charged at the policeman out of nowhere with it's hackles up and teeth bared. As it approached, the cop shot it several times, killing it just before it reached him. He was reprimanded, the city was sued and lost a large settlement, and the policeman lost his job. Yes, our city, which used to be a town of approximately 8K residents and a conservative farm community has grown into a community of 109,000 drawn by high tech growth and is decidedly going blue more each day.
Growing up our family always had dogs and my dad's favorite was boxers and he had a bit of a puppy mill going on in the garage. Keep in mind this was 60-65 years ago. One of my earliest memories was watching them bob the tails of those puppies. The female boxer we had was the sweetest dog you've ever met- it would sleep on the front porch with the neighborhood cats, dogs, and even a family of raccoons . The male , on the other hand, was the most vicious dog I've ever seen then or since. It would literally tear cats into pieces and would do just about anything to get to a cat. Once it bit my mom on the foot when she tried to get a cat away from it and my mom retreated to the house until we got back a couple days later from a hunting trip. My dad was the alpha male to that dog and was the only person he would ever listen to and with him gone, the dog felt like he was running the show. When we got back and my dad heard about what happened he didn't even unpack before he took care of it. He took out his Remington 760 30-06, tossed a bone out in our pasture as far as he could throw it, and when the dog went to retrieve it he shot it and we buried it right there. We had 8 kids in the family and dad couldn't afford to have a vicious dog around the family.
I usually love boxers- they are goofy and look really great and are usually great family dogs, but they aren't the smartest breed around. We have also had labs and once a Pomeranian. Of all of them I think I hated that yapping little Pomeranian the most. I can't tell you how many times it bit me on the ankles when I was a kid. It suddenly disappeared one day and my folks simply said it ran away. I didn't really care either way as I was just glad it was gone.
