The Redwood Gazette

Horrible Brutality—The Killing of Dogs in St. Louis.

The brains of 120 dogs were beaten out at the pound on yesterday. It was the second day of the slaughter. There was no large attendance of outsiders, as on Saturday last. The exhibition was, however, fully as cruel and barbarous as on that date.

The dogs captured on last Wednesday and Thursday were the ones executed. A reporter of the Globe-Democrat was in attendance. Early in the morning the poundmaster fed the dogs on cracklins and water. The scene was not pleasant. When the food was thrown in the dogs sprang for it. They snarled and bit at each other. One big dog forced his companions from the food and helped himself. Then he lay down beside the remainder, and with menacing growls kept the others from taking any of it. One or two dogs were redeemed by their owners during the morning. Their joy at deliverance was ecstatic. The despair of those left behind was profound.

In one of the stalls a vicious tiger-bull had all of his companions in a state of abject subjection. He had mangled two or three of them. The others, huddled in a corner, looked their terror. The brute, who paced up and down the narrow pen, looked as though he feared nothing. There was a sudden change in his manner. There was a howl from the west pen, preceded by the swash of the club of the dog-killer, and followed by a general wail. The slaughter had commenced. The tiger-bull, with each hair on end and tail erect, stood for a moment, bristling defiance. The slaughter continued steadily in the next pen. An idea of what was going on seemed to come over the bull. In an instant his tail fell, and he slunk to the farthest corner of the pen, and lay cowering among the dogs, who, a few moments before, had fled his anger. There was but one dog-killer at work yesterday. He was the smaller of the two employed on Saturday. His name is Rousher. He is by instinct a brute, by profession a butcher. He entered the presence of the cowering curs, and began to wield his terrible club. The dogs were not excited by the presence of visitors as on Saturday, and at the outset were not so frantic in their movements.

Steady blows of the club reduced the number by one-half. The man took the loose dogs first—those that ran about, avoiding the instrument of death. The floor of the pen was slippery with blood. At the door a dozen of the wretched animals struggled and pawed and howled. Some of them made desperate leaps at the door, as if to force it down. Their eager faces, their exposed tongues, their terrible yells, their wonderful muscular efforts, made a terrible sight. The being with a club came to this party. With the nonchalance and steadiness of a blacksmith's striker he rained blows. Each fall of the club marked the fall of a dog. Some of them were killed the first blow. They fell and became stiff in an instant. Some of them fell to their sides, and their limbs alone quivered. One or two extra blows would crush the skulls of these. It was terrible to see how some of the poor things battled with death. Felled by a blow that would stun an ox, they would struggle to their feet and, reeling from side to side, attempt to fly to safety. The club falls again and again, and still the poor thing writhes and struggles, until some one blow, better aimed than the others, crushes the skull like an egg would be broken in. When there were but twenty or twenty-five dogs remaining unkilled in the first pen, they had slunk to a corner, and lay actually piled one upon another. They had ceased to howl or yelp. They whined no more, but lay pictures of mental anguish and torture. "Each dog there knew that his fate was at hand. Some of them closed their eyes. More than one put himself in position to receive the blow, and died without a struggle. One intelligent-looking black-and-tan is particularly remembered. The poor thing crawled from the midst of the other dogs. Dragging himself on his very belly to the center of the pen, he lay down, looked at the executioner once, and then closed his bright steel-blue eyes. The club descended and the little dog was dead.

Sometimes the dog-killer reached into the pile of dogs, and, seizing one by the neck, would drag it into a convenient position for killing. They never thought of biting him. When the dog-killer got tired he stopped to rest. He wiped some drops of blood off his face with his shirt-sleeve. "See him hit that dog," said one of the paid attendants to the reporter. "Yes, he works like it would be all the same to him whether he was killing dogs or men." "Why, he did crack a big butcher over the head with his club about a year and a half ago, and got ten days in the jail for it."

It would be wearisome to follow the slaughter in all its sickening details. It would be impossible to exaggerate its horror. Blood and brains, beaten, literally beaten, out of the poor wretches with a barbarous club. That is the case. To see the poor things awaiting their fate, cowering in the presence of death, is in itself heartrending. To see the struggles of the dying brutes is horrifying. To see the executioner at work is disgusting. There were three pens filled with dogs. When they had been killed, the fellow with the club took a knife and bled each one of them. Then they were put into the rendering company's wagon and carted away.

A reporter of the Globe-Democrat yesterday met Mr. Robert S. MacDonald, President of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. The gentleman had his attention first called to the brutal manner in which the dogs are killed at the pound by the article in Sunday's Globe Democrat. The gentleman was shocked at the cruelty exhibited, and said that the Society would at once take steps to enforce the substitution of a much less barbarous mode of killing the condemned dogs.—St. Louis Globe-Democrat.