Family trying to change law after watching dog get shot

This letter is addressed to anyone who is a dog owner. On the afternoon of Wednesday, Aug. 27, I received a frantic phone call from my stepson saying that our dog had been shot. Hearing my wife crying in the background, I immediately left work and drove home. Our 7-year-old English Pointer, who we have had since she was a pup, had escaped our backyard by digging under the fence and was roaming the neighborhood. While I take full responsibility for allowing Mawg to escape from our property, the actions that followed her escape were so disgusting and senseless, it makes me sick every time I think about it.

With my wife, stepson, and neighbors walking up the road looking for Mawg to bring her home, our other neighbor's teenage son took it upon himself to shoot her through the chest with his .22 rifle, mortally wounding her through the lungs as Mawg was walking toward the street to be leashed and taken home. After mustering the strength to walk from where she had been shot (which was not even on their property) to the road, Mawg collapsed at my wife's feet, bleeding from an entrance and exit wound in her chest, and gasping for air. Our neighbors who had been helping us to find her loaded Mawg into the back of their truck and drove to a veterinary clinic.

Unfortunately, her wounded lungs would not seal and we ended up putting Mawg down later that evening.

Now we get to hear the standard claim that our neighbor was well within his legal right to slaughter Mawg because of some antiquated law that allows livestock owners to kill an animal who "chases, worries, injures, or kills livestock" (NRS 575.020). Now, this might surprise most, but livestock is prioritized over human safety, as I was told that this law supersedes NRS 202.280 and NRS 202.290, which outlaw discharging a firearm in public and discharging a firearm where a person might be endangered.

The bullet that wounded Mawg exited her chest and who knows where it ended up. If you live on Ashcroft Drive there's a chance it may have hit your house, went through your front yard, or the backyard where your children play. I find it absolutely ridiculous that in this day and age a law that gives anyone the right to shoot someone's pet simply by claiming it was "worrying" their livestock still exists. If you want to have a 2.5 acre feedlot in the middle of a residential neighborhood, this is the risk you take. I would like to see this law amended to remove the language "chases" and "worries" and simply include "injures or kills livestock," and place the burden of proof on the livestock owner to prove that their livestock have been injured or killed prior to another senseless killing of a family pet veiled behind a poorly written law dating back to 1911.

For my neighbors who shot Mawg, I hope that you never have to experience the senseless pain that you have put my family through. I hope that your family at least has the moral fiber to feel some inkling of guilt for what has happened. As stated, I accept full responsibility for allowing Mawg to escape from our property, but she did not deserve to die in the manner your family deemed necessary. I hope you consider the anguish you have put my wife and stepson through whenever you drive by the vacant lot that separates our homes where you shot Mawg, every time you look in our backyard where Mawg used to spend all day pointing bugs, every time you hear our dogs barking, and every time you see my family.

We were totally unaware that there were any issues between your family and ours that had not already been dealt with. We have never had the police or animal control called on us, or our dogs, which heightened the surprise and horror of seeing our dog killed right before our eyes. Mawg was not a "vicious or dangerous" dog (defined by NRS 202.500), she has never threatened anything larger than the bugs she tried to catch. Is my family to never allow our dogs to run in our fenced back yard again for fear that they may escape and run over to your property to be shot dead? Is a phone call or yelling 'come get your dog' too much to ask? Although Mawg's life has come to a tragic end, we still have to live next door to one another and our children must ride the same bus to school.

For anyone else who has dogs that sometimes get out, be warned that the same tragedy could happen to your pet and the killers will get protection under the law how it is currently written. If you support amending NRS 575.020 to remove the language "chases" and "worries" to clarify the law so that a dog can only legally be killed by a livestock owner if it has injured or killed livestock, go to www.ipetitions.com/petition/mawgslaw and sign my petition.

Dylan Rader is a resident of Spring Creek, Nev.