A Gift?

A gift I have always possessed, or perhaps I can call it a curse; is the ability to sense evil when it seems as though no one around me can do so. I have walked into a store on many occasions and instantly became uneasy, on the defensive and fearfully begin looking for the source of what is causing the feeling.

If I continue to search the faces, the demeanor, or the body lanuage I will eventually spot the person or persons who is causing me to feel as I do.

In my opinion evil is a real thing that sometimes has control over persons and in some instances even control over animals. I have on several occasions been visciously attacked by dogs in whom I have sensed an evil.

On one occasion many years ago we lived in the town of Deming, New Mexico and I worked for the Luna County Sheriff's Office. Our home was near the north edge of Deming in a small neighborhood in which there was located a number persons it was rumored who raised and fought pitbulls.

One day while seated in the living room watching television with my daughter sitting in my lap, my wife who had been working in the yard, suddenly slammed through the front door of the house obviously enraged by something. Immediately I became concerned by her actions and asked her what was going on. She almost shouted that there was a pitbull in our yard and that he had attacked her and she was going for a gun to kill him.

I jumped up and stopped her and told her that I would take care of the problem. She said that when she saw the dog in our yard she walked towards him with the intent of shooing him out of the yard and away from the kids playing there. She said that when she approached him he did not back off, but began to charge her so she hit him with a rake until he decided to leave. My wife has been around animals all of her life and she was badly frightened by how this dog was acting, she stated that she felt fortunate the dog did not attack her and take her down.

In New Mexico rabies is rampant and there is the constant threat of that dreaded disease, especially around livestock. I immediatey I thought that this dog must be rabid by the description given to me by my wife and so I grabbed a gun and entering my Blazer went looking for the errant dog.

I did not have far to look because he was fighting with two dogs across the street from my house, they in their yard, the pitbull outside. As I watched them fight I saw my elderly neighbor walk to the fence where the dogs were fighting and begin to strike at the pitbull over the fence with a broom in an attempt to turn him away from his dogs. The pitbull began to snap visciously at the old man and several times jumped upward and almost succeeded in grabbing the man's arm in his jaws.

The fight between the dogs began to move down the fence line and towards an open gate in the fence, when I decided that I was going to have to end this dogs life before the fight reached the gate and the dog would be able to attack the old man, this pitbull was not about to quit and run away.

While the dogs were visciously trying to get at each other through the fence, the old mans dogs trying to defend their master from the pitbull,
I drove up as close as I could to the fight and told the old man to back away because I was going to kill the pitbull. He tottered away from the fence and went back into his house and when I felt he was safely out of the way I shot the pitbull one time, killing him instantly.

My elderly neighbor just about pumped my arm off thanking me for stopping a situation that if it had continued would have ended in he being badly mauled at the least and killed at worst and his beloved dogs killed. This pitbull bore scars of many dog fights and it was plain to see that whoever owned this dog had fought him many times before, the dog was in excellent shape physically, and he must have escaped confinement from somewhere close.

I had called the Sheriff's Office where I worked and a Deputy was sent to the scene just about the time the two owners of the dead dog arrived. The instant these men showed up the hackles began to raise up on the back of my neck, and my never failing instinct for the presence of evil told me that here were two that were going to be trouble.

The instant they saw their dead dog the screaming and hollering began, wanting to know who had done such a thing to their fine dog. I owned up to what I had done and it was obvious that if another Deputy had not been there there would have been a fight between us.

No matter how many times I explained the situation and the need to shoot the dog, they would not believe what I said. Finally my elderly neighbor
spoke up and supported my claims that the dog was out of control, and that it amost seemed that the dog was rabid. When this was mentioned to the owners of the dog, the other Deputy asked them if the dog had ever been vaccinated for rabies, and they said yes he had, but the dog had on a dog collar, but no rabies tag on it to varify their claim that he had been vacinated for the disease.

New Mexico state law requires that in this instance the dead dog has to be seized by the officer, and its head must be shipped to the state lab for analysis, to determine whether the dog was rabid. Also the owner of the dog is to be cited for not having proof that the dog had been vaccinated.

This took the fight out of the two men for the moment but I received anonymous telephone death threats for a while after that and so we were forced to keep a close eye on the kids for a while until the emotion of the dog's death subsided.

Based upon the death of the pitbull both of these men were implicated in a dog fighting ring, and I learned later that the dog I had killed was a champion worth a good deal of money. The dog's head was sent to the lab
and it was determined that it was not rabid.

We moved from that location shortly after this incident occured, but it is amazing to me the evil that was perpetrated by those two men against that innocent dog. The two men in my opinion were the embodiment of evil. They trained the dog to be what he was, it is my opinion that a domesticated dog by nature will not attack man unless taught to do so.

I know people who own pitbulls and even though by nature they can sometimes become aggressive, in most instances they are fine and loyal companions and it is man who creates in them the visciousness and blood lust that is required in a fighting dog.