My parents had a dog. She was my dad’s dog, really. My mom didn’t want her. She had broken her chain for the upteenth time and was loose for a week. My mom had had it. My dad finally decided to give her to a farm.

Then today my mom came home and found her in the ditch. She howled when she moved, she couldn’t get up. Half her tail was missing and she obviously had massive internal injuries. She called the vet.

The hardest part of this is not that she’s gone. It’s the cruel way her life was sacrificed.

There had been workers with road graders nearby. A regular car or truck hitting her wouldn’t have lopped off her tail, but a blade from a grader would.

True, she had brown and white marbled eyes that were spooky to look at, but she was calm, quiet and friendly. Her only vices were chewing up things and wandering off the property. The men were probably afraid of her. She probably got too close. They attacked her. With a tractor. Who would do such a thing?

The lesson here is to take care of your pets.