Dogs possibly shot with BB

[Anonymous]

You need to get your dogs to the vet pronto so they can establish the existence of wounds, and write down whether or not they are compatible with BB gun balls. Both to get treatment and to document the attack.

As for cameras: you won't be able to catch a expelled ball from a gun, but you can place cameras at such an angle that they not only capture the street and public sidewalk next to your house, or your backyard, but also porches/windows from neighboring homes. Warning: it is illegal to record your neighbors' private lives, and so recording someone at a window is a grey area. But if the lens plausibly includes the public space (ie, street), and you just happen to catch a kid shooting something from a bedroom window... I'm guessing the family might be sensitive to that kind of evidence, even if you'd need a lawyer to walk you through privacy laws.

I hope no one is hurt again, OP, but this is just in case.

[Anonymous]

Can’t believe you didn’t take them to the vet if you thought they were shot with a BB.

[Anonymous]

Maybe a forensic vet

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:A BB likely wouldn’t have broken the skin. An airsoft might have, but you would have heard it.

A BB can most definitely enter the skin.

[Anonymous]

Consider investing in a 6 foot fence.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:A BB likely wouldn’t have broken the skin. An airsoft might have, but you would have heard it.

A BB can most definitely enter the skin.

Maybe at close range. But not from so far away that OP didn’t even notice. Let’s be for real.

[Anonymous]

Unless it was close range a BB would not go thru a dogs ear. Even then it’s doubtful.
Sorry this happened.

[Anonymous]

OP you sound unhinged. Take a chill pill.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I suspect my dogs were shot with a BB gun over the weekend. They were in my fenced backyard (1/2 acre lot), I was out with them but had my back turned to walk back inside. All of the sudden my beagle yelps and lies down cowering. I thought maybe she had stepped on a sharp stick or something, I searched her paws, legs and body but didn’t find anything. She recovered after about 30 minutes and was a little skittish but mostly back to normal. A couple hours later I notice a small gouge on my lab’s leg. Could be from anything – he does run around a lot and could have nicked it on our stone wall or one of the bushes. At bedtime, I notice dried blood on the inside of my beagle’s ear (like on the inside of the floppy ear), and it appears that something punctured her floppy ear with just a tiny entry on the outer side. I can’t believe I didn’t check her ear when she yelped, but I thought it must have been something she stepped on. This gets me thinking… odd that both are hurt, and there’s nothing in the backyard that would puncture her ear like that.
We are on a corner lot, and the dogs could have only been hit by neighbors behind us, or across the street from the side of our house. The house behind us is a lawyer couple with a young adult son, roughly 21-23 years old, but we don’t know them. Across the street from the backyard are two families – one with a two high schoolers (10th, 11th), and one with a middle school (8th) and high schooler (11th). We know these families, our kids are roughly the same age. We suspect it could be the 8th grader – no real evidence expect he’s a bit of a punk (example - slapped the Halloween candy bowl out of my husband’s hands when he was in 6th grade, plays street hockey in front of our house which was fine when they were little but an 8th grader swinging a hockey stick by our cars is concerning, so we asked them to stop playing in front of our house). I can’t imagine anyone else would be walking around the neighborhood and shooting dogs. We have a camera in the back, but it didn’t catch anything as there are several trees along our fenceline. We are going to add another camera to give us better angles.
I sent a text to both families that we know, telling them what happened and asked them to watch out for their dogs as well – no accusation at all, just played dumb and said to keep an eye out.
My kids are freaked out and don’t want our dogs to be outside much. I understand their concern and share it, but its crappy to feel like our dogs are not safe in our own backyard.
FWIW, my dogs don’t spend hours outside barking – they are usually only out there for 5-10 minutes at a time, and only bark briefly when a neighbor passes, like an alert bark and then they stop. The neighbor behind us has huskies that are out on their enclosed deck ALL THE TIME and bark for hours, including at night.
What would you do? We don’t have any proof, and are merely guessing they were shot based on the puncture to my beagle’s ear. We looked for BBs but did not find any.

Your dogs were absolutely shot by one of those kids. You’ve reached out to two of them, the other if you don’t have the contact info you may need to knock on the door. I would also file a police report or something.

When I was a kid, my cat got shot and killed. He was still alive when we found him and took him to the hospital, they retrieved a bullet but he died a couple days later. My cat was gigantic and had a striped tail. He could’ve been mistaken for a raccoon. Lived across the street from some weird goth teenager whose parents were cops so I know he had access to guns. Either that or my daddy shot him.

But I know how you feel. I hope your baby doggies are ok.

[Anonymous]

Smart to e-mail the neighbors. If one of them bought their kid a bB or airspft, they probably have now taken it away.

[Anonymous]

I think if a dog got shot in the ear, it would be apparent from their behavior.

[Anonymous]

I would be at the vet vs posting here.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Unless it was close range a BB would not go thru a dogs ear. Even then it’s doubtful.
Sorry this happened.

+1. I was shot with a BB gun on 2 occasions (within 25 feet) in my teens... and it hurt but didn't penetrate the skin. Just left a red mark. On a 1/2 acre lot, assuming your dogs weren't literally on the fence line, the BB wouldn't pierce a dogs ear from 50-75 feet away. I think this is a stretch, but I get you are trying to figure it out.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:A BB likely wouldn’t have broken the skin. An airsoft might have, but you would have heard it.

I have a powerful airsoft, hunt with it and have shot it countless amounts of times.

If OP was inside and the boy was shooting from his window (say about 20 yards to the backyard) OP would not hear it. Airsofts aren't that loud and to the untrained ear most don't pick it up (when I was a kid I used to shoot them in the front and backyard and no one ever mentioned me shooting it or noticed, despite me asking if they did).

Also, I doubt it was an airsoft or a BB as you say it wouldn't have broken skin, especially against a dogs. I'd setup the cameras for the piece of mind also but I doubt it's the boy.