We have a 16 month old border terrier. Annmarie has been working with him and takes him to the hospital to become a therapy dog. He loves everyone and will let anyone pet him. He does not get ruffled, riding elevator, around walkers, canes, wheelchairs, noisy IV pumps, emotional families, emotional patients. He is pretty much a loving rock.
At home he has decided that the yard is his space. We have barn cats that sneak down to eat the porch kitty food and he tends to harass them at bedtime because they are not supposed to be there. Last week we let the dogs outside at bedtime and told them it was bedtime potties. Milo ran around the yard and next thing we know he is barking up a storm. I knocked on the side window to get him to quit barking, it did nothing. I went and opened the small window in the laundry room and hollered at him, no response or let up on the noise. Then he starts doing this weird baying sound and is fighting with something outside the back door.
I grab the spotlight and my pistol and just step out the back door looking for the cat. Milo has a full size raccoon trapped on the cat food ledge and every time it tries to get off the ledge on the front side, Milo drives it back. I call him off and he comes right to me. The raccoon is promptly dispatched. I have friends who say I should live trap and move them. The problem is that everyone else in town live traps them and turns them loose at the edge of our property so there is an endless supply of raccoons (i.e “chicken killers”). I figured out that since we have moved back home I have had over 300 chickens killed by raccoons. A chicken won’t even lay an egg until it’s over 6 months old. That is a time and money commitment. I don’t have any sympathy for the raccoons anymore.
This week our heat pump went out on Sunday night so we ended up sleeping downstairs. It was 2 degrees cooler downstairs than upstairs. Annmarie let Milo outside around Midnight because he woke her up. Normally he sleeps through the entire night upstairs with us. Around 0130 he starts raising a ruckus. I wake up to Annmarie hollering my name and hollering at our big dog to get inside. The border collie keeps trying to run upstairs because she knows if I am running outside in the middle of the night I am armed. I grabbed the spotlight and my pistol and run out onto the front porch. Milo is hollering, growling and some other creature is hollering. I get to the front porch and I can tell that they are down in the water in the ditch under the crossing board. I think Milo has another raccoon pinned into the corner and he is just waiting for me to show up. I get across the hillside and Milo has another raccoon by the throat in the water and mud and is not letting go. I call him off and he just lets go and moves six feet away. The raccoon is dispatched but when I went to take Milo inside the house he is absolutely filthy. In his need to dominate he failed to take into account his surroundings, he was covered in mud and water. He had to sleep on the back porch and then get a shower the next day before he could go back to work.
We are pretty sure no one at work believes us. He is the calmest gentlest dog when he is there. Now every night when we let him out for his bedtime routine he runs the entire length of the fence patrolling to make sure that no raccoon has encroached.
Stewart Creek Somethings 