Last week I watched a “Gunsmoke” where some kid’s dog had run off and turned sheep killer. The dog eventually returned and resumed his pet status. Ranchers wanted to kill the dog, but Fetus set up a test where the dog didn’t want to kill sheep anymore. Fact or fiction?

Jack Schaefer, the author of “Shane,” is an excellent writer of Westerns. One of his short stories, “Enos Carr,” got me to thinking about this again. He said, “When a dog takes to killing stock, there’s only one recipe for it and that’s killing the dog.” Now we have another opinion.

Betsy and I have had some experience along these lines. Early on, some folks gave us the puppy. They said he was a black lab, but I had some doubts as he had a white blaze across his chest. Having a dog around our farm place seemed like a good idea. I was teaching Shakespeare at the time, and the name Falstaff seemed appropriate although everyone called him “Falsie.”

He may or may not have been the smartest dog we ever owned, but he was by far the most audacious. He loved Saturday mornings as every parking place on Main Street was taken. This enabled him to go up and down Main Street by jumping from car hood to car hood. Everyone thought it was cute, and this only encouraged his behavior.

He loved to follow me to school in the mornings, and telling him to go back home was a daily occurrence. I had 1st period study hall in a large room on the 2nd floor of the school, and I can recall the time when things were unusually quiet. There was Falstaff in one of the rear seats. The kids loved it, but Falsie loved it even more.

I don’t know that he loved hunting more than being with the kids, but it was right up there. In the fall the geese were thick on Spirit Lake, about ten miles south of Willow Lake. I had yet to take my first goose, but it was only a matter of time until they would take off over me. It finally happened, and Falstaff was with me. He was still a pup, but he swam out to retrieve my Canada goose, only to be bitten on the nose by said goose. He let out with a yelp, and I wound up stripping and retrieving the goose myself.

Most of the geese in our area were snows and blues. That same fall Larry Jaacks, who taught business and coached basketball, and I dug a pit south of our buildings. We used crumpled newspapers as decoys, and Larry dropped a blue the first time we tried it. We were proud and amazed that such a technique would work so well.

One night that first summer, after we had come home quite late, we noticed that the sheep were restless. We wondered about it, but not enough to call Mr. Pommer, the owner of the sheep. The next morning he knocked on our back door and told us that seven sheep had been killed by a dog pack. He went on to advise us to keep Falstaff locked up at night so he wouldn’t fall in with those killer dogs.

Every night we put Falsie in a small shed and barred the door. He was extremely unhappy about it and barked for three or four nights afterwards. We didn’t know that Falstaff was getting out at night by crawling under a board in the floor and returning before sunup.

And then one morning angry neighbors came to our door and told us that dogs had killed thirteen sheep the previous night. They had managed to kill three of the marauders and get a good look at some of the others. They told us that one of the dogs was Falstaff. We told them that we would make sure that Falsie never got out again, but they said that wasn’t good enough…..that “once a dog has tasted fresh blood, he’d never forget.” They said there was only one solution. I would have to shoot my dog, or they would do it for me. I, somewhat tearfully, took Falsie on his last hunt.

Going through some old columns made me think about this. Can a dog, once killer, be turned around? Who’s right? Jack Schaefer and my Willow Lake neighbors, or the Gunsmoke writers?

I’ve completed my surgeries, but I’m very weak. I’m looking very forward to getting back to my old self. See you next week.