I was sleeping pretty peacefully this morning when Andrea jumped out of bed and threw on a robe. I’m a heavy sleeper but she isn’t, and she could hear our dog Maya yelping out in the back yard.

Like most of our animals, Maya is a rescue and she must have been abused at some point in time in the past since she overreacts to any form of correction or pain. I figured Freya (the older, bigger dog) had probably snapped at her.

I was wrong. Andrea came back in and told me to get the rifle.

It seems that the dogs had cornered a raccoon and they had damaged it pretty badly. It had gotten a few licks in on its own, mainly on Maya’s face (Freya only had a bite on her ear). The raccoon was so hurt that while it was trying to crawl over the lowest board in our three board fence it sort of got stuck, so I had to shoot it to put it out of its misery.

I’ve fired a number of weapons but I had never killed an animal before. I didn’t enjoy it, although I knew I was doing a good thing. I don’t think it would have been possible for the raccoon to survive.

I learned a few minutes later when I went to the barn that if you are going to fire off several .22 rounds near the horses – they don’t exactly like it. They left the barn in a hurry and in their agitation pretty much trashed the stalls.

So then it was off to the vet for a rabies booster for Freya and antibiotics. While Freya loves the truck, Maya doesn’t, and just before we got home she threw up all over the back of my newly detailed cab.

What a way to start the day.

On a good note, my mother-in-law managed to get our last feral cat to the vet to be spayed. Thus in three weeks the total is 9 cats: 5 females and 4 males.