Archive for July 21st, 2007

Fully Licensed

Posted in farming on 07/21/2007 01:29 am by Stephen

So, last night was very rage-ful.

We have made it our habit to go out every evening and say “Hi” to the ‘paca when Tam gets home for work. This way Tam can seen them on more than the weekends during the dark winter months, and a 15-20 minute walk each night is not a bad thing in its own right.

Our northern neighbor (with whom we have other stuid issues) lets his dogs out for a run each night about the same time. He also takes a walk around his back paddock while the dogs are hooning around and barking like mad. Last night we look up, and see his two dogs running around on our back hill, chasing Stuart’s sheep (Stuart has about 4 ewes that sneak onto our side, we both known they are there, and that is fine until we get the hole patched in the fence).

Dogs chasing stock. On our property. Very, VERY not-cool. Under NZ law we would have been 100% right to shoot them then and there. Not having a gun, we could not do so. So we resorted to an angry phone call. His excuse for there precence there was that they had chased some of Stuarts sheep through from his side to ours… so his excuse was they were harrying stock? WTF?

It saddens me that those dogs may end up shot. It is not their fault, really. The “no bad dogs, just bad owners” line comes to mind. Most people just don’t understand that in a rural environment dogs are not toys, they are tools. He thinks because they are huntaway crosses (a breed of stock-dog) they are safe. Wrong, breeders of stock dogs kill many of the pups as they will never be safe with stock. And without strong alpha-human leadership, even “safe and trained” stock dogs will kill sheep. That is why they are locked in kennels when not working under direct supervision.

Our neighbor claims it will never happen again. We don’t belive him. Now I get to spend my evenings sitting out there with a camera, hoping to catch them in the act again. I also need to get off my rear and get myself a firearms license. I don’t want to shoot his dogs, but I will if I have to. I can deal better with the guilt of a few dead dogs, than the guilt of burying a half-score mauled ‘paca.