DF told me he shot his dog

[DickDarstedly]

I have just been visiting DF (90) in his care home. We were talking about the various pets we have had over the years. He said he had had a dog as a child and that he had shot it dead because it had been badly behaved. I said that is awful and asked if he was sad he had done it, I also asked what his parents had said about it. His response was to repeat that the dog was annoying, as if that explained everything.

I have never heard this story before and DF does have dementia, earlier in in the visit he told me his father had just died (he died 30 years ago). It’s just possible he is ‘remembering’ something he heard about or saw in a film. The thing is though, he has always lacked empathy and so I am inclined to think it is true.

I am still travelling home and don’t have anyone to share this with until I get back. I’d like to make sense of it. For context, DF has done many things over the years which show that he has no empathy or conscience, but I have tended to make excuses for him. But now I am wondering if I have been a bit naive. I know life was different in the 1940s/50s but to me this is sociopathic and it really changes how I think about him.

How would you feel if you heard this from a parent?

I’d try and brush it off as something he got confused about. If true it is surprising it has never come up.

a family member a very long time ago (he’s now dead) drowned his dog’s puppies as he didn’t know what to do with them. This horrified me when I found out, in my teens, and I never looked at his the same way again.

my mum’s reasoning was that “things were different then”(may have been in the 60s or 70s). True but that didn’t help.

Yes it was common in those days to shoot, drown or otherwise kill unwanted animals. It was also common for country people to own guns and for the young folks in the family to use them, for example, to shoot birds or rabbits to eat or to kill wild animals that were threatening crops or chickens. My father often did this from the age of 13-14. Different times.

There are some nasty, evil people around, who aren't even sociopaths or psychopaths, they are just cruel to animals. People who would think nothing of killing a dog because it does not hunt effectively. It boils my blood and I wish them nothing but suffering.

In this instance OP, I would try to dismiss this info and certainly not raise it again, and I say that because of your DF's illness. Worse case, he did do it - but then there is the reason why? I know you've said that he has never been very empathetic, but a person who can shoot a dog because it is 'annoying', I'm sure you would've witnessed vile behaviours from him as you grew up. He may have shot it because it was unwell, people didn't have the access to the veterinary care that we do now. Or, he may just be extremely confused, having witnessed it at some point in his life, or even seen it in a movie.

I'd let this go. Hope you are ok? That is a very distressing thing to hear from a loved one.

The man has got dementia for god's sake show an ounce of compassion for him. It's all very well you being into animals but have some empathy for humans please

My aunt told me she’d done a sky dive. Described it in detail. It never happened. I’d forget what your DF said.

The idea of putting them out of their misery if suffering was common and always accepted as being the responsibility of the owner, or their parent.
A farm or house dog that is biting or forever getting in the way was dealt with. Life was too complicated and too active then compared to now. Who would they know who would want to take it on knowing it was a bloody nuisance?
If it really was shot it would not have felt a thing and it would have been calm not stressed at being somewhere strange like a vet's office.

A few decades ago shooting an animal with a gun was the equivalent of having a vet PTS and if a dog is agressive or dangerous then ending their life is usually seen as the appropriate action because of the risks of failure if attempts to train better behaviour were to be unsuccessful. Given that your DF has dementia now you will never get the actual facts so try not to dwell on it.

As he has dementia there is some doubt about whether this really occurred. You can choose to believe it or not as you can never get proof of whether it happened or not. Basically, you have two choices ... believe it or not ...both choices without proof.
Personally I would choose not to believe it. You seen to already have many sad memories of your dad which actually happened. Why hurt yourself by adding another which may not have happened.
Dementia is a terrible disease, playing total havoc with the mind. Try not to dwell on this shocking story if you can unfortunately there may be more to come. 💐

Dont judge. You don’t know the full story.
when my Grandpa was a boy, his dog got sick and his father made him drown it, as it was his dog and so his responsibility
Can you imagine the trauma for a child, having to hold down his own dog as it struggled as the life drained from it?
Just be grateful we live in more enlightened times

Whether it's true or not, it is pointless to get upset about it or try to get to the truth. You heard a story that shocked you - it may have happened a long time ago, it may be a muddled brain throwing something completely untrue out.

I agree with some others that it's not a heinous confession anyway and your dad isn't suddenly a monster if it is true. People were a lot less sentimental about animals generally when my parents were young, and it wouldn't have been unusual for someone in the family to get rid of nuisance pets. Shooting a dog that had been aggressive or bitten someone would not have been out of the ordinary. Vets weren't the first port of call for things that could be dealt with at home.

My mother has advanced dementia and barely any speech now. But even in the early stages of dementia she came out with various things that weren't true. She said she drove - she never drove and failed her driving test. She said she used to go jogging. Nope - never happened.

Her recollection of the past was just as bad as her recollection of the short-term. Her dementia has totally destroyed her brain.

Conversely, my grandmother also had dementia but had a good long-term memory.

OP - I wouldn't trust anyone with dementia to be reliable. I don't think guns were prolific in this country and the notion that someone would shoot a dog dead and that this is the first you've heard of it seems unlikely.

In rural areas at that time, shooting a dog that was a hazard - chasing stock, harassing visitors - might have been considered the only to way to manage it. I grew up on a farm, and the old farmers would consider it their duty to do this themselves - that getting someone else to do it was disrespectful to the dog. Times were different.

My father would have been of ages with yours, and grew up in the country. He had his own gun for shooting rabbits, and although I'm confident he never shot a dog himself, it was absolutely standard on farms right up until I was a kid in the 70s and 80s.

He told me once that his cat had kittens and his father made him drown them in a bucket- he would have been under 10. I think this was supposed to 'make a man of him'. I never met my grandfather, but I think he must have been a real shit. However, my father did seem to think this was normal at the time.

It may surprise some people but it does still happen, there was a case just a few months ago in our rural (but not that rural,) area when an owner tied his dogs to a tree shot him & left him for dead. There was public outcry in the form of a petition to get justice for this dog but no-one prosecuted. A vigil was held for him.
I think owner had come from farming background.
The very real danger is if something goes wrong, the dog is left to struggle & won't die peacefully. This is what happened in the above case, there were clear signs that the dog had suffered. For some weird reason RSPCA & police didn't prosecute the owner.

Perhaps there wasn't enough proof he did it, but he had just let dog go to wander around hoping he'd get lost or someone might find him & take him on, but he was taken to a vet & reunited with owner. At this point owner had shot him on the way home.
Incredibly sad & unnecessarily cruel.

My gran had dementia and my Mum visited her every day in hospital. She accused my Mum of getting drunk every day, giving away her children and refusing to cook and clean the house. My Mum was teetotal, had 5 children and cooked meals from scratch every single day. Take no notice of him.

@Strangeways19 it is absolutely still happening, and those are the bastards who I hope suffer incredibly. There is absolutely no reason to do that nowadays. Absolutely disgusting.

I'm not sure life was any more cruel back then - we might not raise our own Christmas dinner but cheerfully buy one that's led an utterly shit life in a factory farm.

Walking my border collie one morning, random chap, 'lovely dog etc, used to have one just like it when I was a boy'. More inconsequential chat. 'My dad used to take me and the dog out hunting (er, hmm. Start to move away, don't like this) we went out one Saturday morning, we were walking down the street and he said hey Jim, I turned to look at him and he put his shotgun under his chin and pulled the trigger'. 😧made my excuses and left. Bloody hell! Left me speechless. Who does that to a complete stranger? Still shocks me now, years later.

I don't know what "going down" means here. But the big danger is going to be if something went wrong with the shooting & the dog suffered more, for this reason alone ( not to mention the illegality of it) I would say it is a big fat no no.

Take it with a pinch of salt if it upsets you. You will never know the full story and naughty could have been anything from livestock worrier to dangerous. Try not to judge too harshly, as times would have been very different.
I know a couple people who have euthanised their own dogs, not to be cruel, but because they didn't want the dog's last moments to be at a vet or with a stranger. How difficult though would it have been 50, 60, 70 years ago to rush a sick pet to the vet? Where I live if you didn't want the animal to suffer then you dealt with them yourself or took them to the butcher to to be euthanised.

Precisely.

We have euthanised dogs by shooting. They died instantly, eating a pie or something, all and at home, in a rural setting.
We have also shot animals for food.
And we never just wound an animal, as in the dreadful anecdote above.
Yet we do have empathy and believe that we are reasonably decent people.

Mumsnet is notoriously anti guns, so I don't expect anyone actually to reflect about this kind of quick death, as opposed to the dreadful, fearful experience animals will have in a slaughterhouse.

Sorry about your father.

This is very common.

It costs quite a lot to go to the vet and if you don’t really care about the dog then you aren’t going to spend money going to have it PTS when you have a gun and can do it yourself.

If you shoot to kill other animals then it would make sense to shoot your own pets too.

I accidentally (came up on SM) saw a video of people doing this and I won’t say the details but it still haunts me.
They were either fox hunters or dog racers as it was highlighting why it should be banned.

If he had done it recently then I’d want nothing more to do with him but as he is old and has dementia then I’d try and forget about it.

Do you all eat meat? The hypocrisy is mental

@Shreik no 😮.

My dad has dementia and his conversation for a time was full of interesting recollections, none of which happened, or at least which didn't happen to him and someone which were muddling real life with favourite films. It wasn't lying, it was confusion.

So maybe your dad shot his dog (a common form of euthanasia for animals in the past).
Or maybe someone else shot his dog.
Or maybe he once saw or heard of another dog being shot.

There isn't a standard model of memory loss/confusion and dementia, how it progresses is very individual, and depends on which parts of the brain are bein affected. Being all affronted by this is silly and claiming that dementia somehow "reveals the person underneath " is rarely true and quite hurtful.