On Monday the 23rd at around 7:30 pm, Perry and I heard a gunshot. It sounded like it came from the direction of the park/bike trail behind our house. Then we realized we hadn't seen Trixie for a good 15 minutes or so....after a search, we determined that she was missing (and one of the fence boards between us and our neighbor was turned sideways, so we knew exactly how she got out). I was in the front yard calling her name when a group of people congregated at the entrance to the bike trail yelled, "Are you missing your dog?" and when I yelled yes, they yelled, "THEY JUST SHOT A DOG DOWN THE PATH."

And I knew.

Perry says he really knew when he heard the shot, in his gut he knew.

She headed straight for the path and a small dog and tried to kill it, because that was Trixie. And police were called, and they killed her. Perry always said that if she ever really got out and had some time, this is exactly what would happen. I didn't want to believe him. Now I do.

We will never know what happened to her in her first year of life to make her so aggressive. We do know that we spent $700 and sent her to a boarding school for dogs in an effort to un-learn that aggressive behavior, but they returned her to us without making the slightest dent in it because it scared them, too. They didn't want any animal murders on their hands, so they just stopped trying when they saw her in action.

That aggression extended to human babies, too. Whenever my brother would come for Thanksgiving with his two kids under 5,
Trixie had to spend the day locked outside. She wanted to kill the babies---something about the crying set her off.

And we heard time and time again that with a dog like Trixie, you gotta put her down before tragedy strikes. Well, it struck. US. She didn't kill the other dog on Monday. We paid the vet's bill of...$700. But that cop killed my dog with a shotgun and now there is no love here and I am bereft and there is a hole in my soul that NOTHING can fill, NOTHING.