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My Golden is a giant wimp, but he is also 85 lbs and certainly can be perceieved as a threat if riled.. however, shooting a dog in its own yard?

I have been bit by dogs, and yes even the tamest breed or dog can do damage, but still, if the dog hadn’t left its yard... which obviously it hadn’t because of the electric fence, I think this officer likely over reacted, big time.

Sad day for those kids, always hurts when a pet dies, but to have it killed in front of you, by what was probably just flat out foolishness... certainly isn’t a good day.

Back when I was trying to figure out how fast the skiers in Cross Country are going when they go downhill I found they could do 65 MPH easy, and maybe more depending on the height of the hill.

A WOLF (same's as a dog but smarter) could do 35 MPH on average, which was equal to the cross country skier on average.

You can figure out quickly why the Sa'ami and Alpine hunters had an advantage over the wolves ~ it was the 65 MPH part. Wolves, and dogs, usually can't run that fast, but they are STILL much faster than a man on foot.

So the dog was 25 feet from the porch when it was shot. At 35 mph how much time would it take the dog to reach the officer?

I think we need more information to address the equation directly, but it is a solvable problem.

Which takes me to my point ~ dogs are usually not stupid. They think, plan ahead, consider, and figure out how to attack.

So, here's a dog and he's been thinking, planning, and imagining attacking and all at once he's loose and there's a guy on the sidewalk ~ all that pent up thinking bursts loose and he's off in a flash moving SEVERAL TIMES FASTER than a cop at a walking pace.

We can go to a table of standard values that tell us how many seconds it takes to sight a target and pull a standard service revolver.

BTW, guys, the dog already knows that if he's going as fast as he can he can get outside that electric fence with ease. His owner probably doesn't know that but the 6 kids might have one or two who do know. We could ask them about how the dog leaves the yard.

Fur Shur, that dog's going to be hauling as fast as he can if he's attempting to penetrate the fence and get to the man on the sidewalk. It's possible that at 35 miles per hour the dog can get to the man faster than he can pull his gun and aim. But if the man is farther away, and he's already got his gun in his hand, the odds are against the dog making to his target before getting shot.

We can measure these things and figure out most of it if somebody can get the address. Google.com has all the info.

Found the community. Big lots. The houses are all about 60 feet from the road. That means the dog had covered nearly half the distance to the officer. He was definitely not used to folks wandering about on foot.

There are NO SIDEWALKS.

Some of these people have swimming pools and tennis courts!

Let me add to the formula that we have a cop ~ new officer paid maybe $24k per year, and there are people with mercedes' costing 3 times that parked in a ditch to make way for the family Lamborghini in the garage.

For whatever reason he shot the family dog.

ANSWER: He's toast!