Episode #60

[YinYang]

Also, I know a lot of people who rescue chickens/roosters, and there are implants that you can get for them - even for the males - that help manage their hormone levels. If that's ever something you're interested in down the line.

My friend has 6 roosters that she rescued from a cockfighting ring - there were almost 60 seized in Denver, and held in evidence for several months. (All of them were successfully adopted out!) She keeps them in separate enclosures and hopes to work with resocializing them into a flock someday - other sanctuaries have done it - but unfortunately these poor guys are often injected with meth, so all of their temperament problems are exacerbated even more...

That is just insane... injecting them with meth? What??? I vaguely knew of cockfighting, I'm more familiar with the dog fighting rings.

We've had an extremely turbulent chapter in our family with a dog when we were kids. My brother walked in one evening with this black face peeking out of his jacket, it was a pitch black staffie. I was 5, and when I reached out to touch him he growled at me, which (thinking back on it now) was unusual for a puppy of only 6 weeks old. These dogs are bred to kill. As he got older it just got more and more disastrous. The terrier breed is renowned for having "one" owner in an entire household, and it became me. He slept in my bed, and he followed me everywhere. We had two other Jack Russells also, who were also always with me, but I saw quickly as Rocky (the staffie) got older that the male Jack Russell was in trouble. They were not getting along.

One night I slept inside the tent on the lawn again (I did that a lot), with all the dogs inside the tent, and early the next morning havoc broke out in the tent. Rocky was busy killing Spatsels (the Jack Russell), he had his jaw around his throat and was swinging him around, and I grabbed Rocky's jaw and started pulling it open so Spatsels (the Jack Russell) can get out. Now these dogs have what you call a "lock jaw", it locks when they go into a frenzy like that. As I got it open, it closed again on my thumb, and he was just going berserk. He had white foam coming out of his mouth. He took off the entire top side of my thumb. It has thankfully healed completely, my nail grew back and you can't see anything today.

I was of course screaming blue murder as all this was happening, and that morning my dad said " I have had enough, I want the dog GONE!" I said "no."...

Then the one day our domestic worker reached out at me, and he went for her. He tore out the entire inside of her upper leg. That day when my mom got back from the hospital, she said she can't take it anymore, she wants "that thing" off her yard. I said "no." Same thing happened with the garden worker, also severe injuries, as he was reaching out to me.

It just got so out of control, "I" became scared of him, because I couldn't control him. It was as if he had a demon inside of him. Then one day the police rocked up at the door and said they came for the dog, he has practically killed every other dog in the street. I knew I couldn't hand the dog to them, because he would probably rip them to pieces, so I told them to stand back as I put the dog in the back of the van. I'll never forget that day as they drove off.

To this day, I want nothing to do with any terrier breed.