When the pup was brought to town, the record of the old dogs followed—and as he grew to be a monstrous dog he was feared by some people who knew him only by his breeding. Then the town got a mad-dog scare. Vic was reportedly seen fighting with the suspected mad-dog down in the lower part of town—on “Smoky Row.” The informer recanted later—but that did not help matters after Vic had been killed by order of the City Marshal. I think the dog’s overly-advertised ancestry had marked him for annihilation. Thus, “the sins of the parents were visited upon the son” to the extent of needless distrust.
Myrtle said she couldn’t believe her dog was seen fighting with another dog on the town-side of the tracks, as he was never known to leave the home alone. But she felt that it was best to be on the safe side. And then too an order was an order. She wished that it had come a week earlier, so as to have saved her the dollar tax she had paid the City Marshal for the privilege of keeping Vic another year. It was a tragedy that the girls’ watchdog was to be killed because of that false alarm.
Here I will put in a word on my own hook. I knew Ed Lazelere had stuck the pup headfirst into a rubber boot and given him a treatment designed to keep the dog at home. It really worked. In his mature years Vic was never known to leave the premises alone, and seldom with either of the girls. His one mistake in his puppy days was when he followed Myrtle, unbidden, to the Lazelere home.
Frosty Shuemaker was detailed to do the shooting. I went along to help get the dog away from the house. Vic was in the back yard in the shade of an apple tree. He wouldn’t budge for us. Myrtle came to the back door, and said she would have Jessie lead him over to the creek bank west of the house. Frosty and I went around to the front of the house, and then west on the outside of the yard fence to where there was an opening in the enclosure.
Jessie and the dog came running. Vic stopped broadside opposite the opening, and was knocked down with a single charge from Frosty’s double-barreled shotgun—when Jessie was halfway back to the house. She did not look back. She held in until the booming report of the shotgun — then let out a terrific squawk. We dragged the dead dog outside the yard fence and left it in a weed patch. Vic was now the City’s dog. The Marshal would get a dollar for burying him.