We knew early on that we’d never be able to prove who killed the children’s pets, but besides their parents getting divorced, losing those dogs in that manner was the most devastating thing that ever happened to my grandchildren. I have since decided that it is just as well that we never found out who was responsible. By law (at least in TN), dogs are considered property and it is doubtful that there would have been very much punishment for a crime of this sort anyway. It might have been worse to know who would murder sweet and defenseless animals and devastate innocent children in order to hurt you. My grandson finally told me about 6 months ago that he had come to a place where he could just remember the dogs and appreciate the time he had with them. My granddaughter never talks about it. The truth is that both children suffered terribly. A front page picture and article appeared in the local newspaper about it and one of the Memphis television stations came up and did a news segment on it. Of course, there was all kinds of speculation from people who did not know us that the dogs ran loose or in some way infringed on the rights of others, but we live out in the country and the dogs were trained to never get out of the yard. Both dogs were friendly, affectionate, and full of the usual border collie type energy. They were extremely smart and my grandson spent time outside with them every single afternoon teaching them various tricks. He also got into photography just a bit and took some really good pictures of them. If he has picked up a camera since, I do not know about it. The person that shot these dogs came into the garage to kill the female dog. The garage door was down, so they entered a back door to shoot her. The male dog was lying under a pickup truck possibly trying to shy away from whoever shot him. I will spare you any further grisly details.
I have a friend who suggested a book that I think did help them. The book is Heaven by Randy Alcorn. The long and short of it is that the scriptures don’t say that your pets won’t be in heaven. The scriptures just don’t address the issue. Revelation tells us that horses will be there, so it is not unreasonable to believe that other animals will be there as well. I don’t know whether we’ll see pets in heaven or not, but this book did help my grandchildren move forward during an awfully tough time.
I’m not going to post my own photography tonight. The following pictures were taken by my grandson with a point and shoot camera.
The dogs, Foxy and Jack, were both very intelligent, sweet, and full of personality. I think my grandson might have had a gift with the camera. Both grandchildren have a deep love of animals.
2 comments:
I am sorry to read about your grandchildren's dogs, they were beautiful creatures.
they remind me of my great big dogs, some people do not value lives.....
They really were beautiful, smart, and loving dogs. We all grieved for the dogs, but seeing the children suffer so badly was the worst. I've often wondered what the perpetrator might be up to by now. If a person could do that, what might they be capable of?
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