I had to use my carry piece today

Sorry for the long post, I don’t know if this belongs here, but I need to get this off my chest.TL;DR I had to shoot a sick goat today and it’s kind of fucking with me.I’m a PI, so I regularly carry when I’m working. I have a client who has been in jail for the last two years on a double homicide charge. He owns a large, rural property, and I try to go out there every once and a while to check on it and make sure no one is squatting on it.My client had seven goats on the property. For the past two years they’ve just been roaming and fending for themselves. They have shelter, and basically unlimited food and water, so they’ve just been doing their own thing. Last year I found the remains of one of the goats that had been eaten by something, so I know there are predators out there.We have tried getting our client and his brother (co-owner of the property but he doesn’t live there) to let someone take care of the goats, but both brothers have some pretty severe mental disabilities and they’ve refused to let anyone take them.Today I went out to the property for the first time in months. Five of the goats ran up to greet me, they are very friendly and I always enjoy hanging out with them when I go out there. I walked up to the house and found the sixth one completely emaciated with a hugely swollen and fucked up looking udder. She was moving very slowly and clearly in pain.I’m kind of a softy, especially when it comes to animals, and I can’t stand to see things suffer. I sat with her for a while and scratched her ears, which she seemed to like. Eventually she wandered off to graze, she was eating some grass when I shot her in the back of the head.She dropped like a bag of rocks and lay completely still. I sat next to her and pet her some more just in case she still had any feeling, but I’m pretty sure she was immediately unconscious. I sat with my hand on her chest and I could feel her heart beating for a good minute or so, but she seemed calm. After a while I couldn’t feel the beat anymore, and she started to spasm. It was eerie and strange, and for a second it almost seemed like she was going to get back up again. She finally stopped kicking, gave a little swish of her tail, and that was it.I had to drag her about 100 yards to hide her in some bushes. I felt bad that I couldn’t bury her but I didn’t have any tools. In the words of Josey Wales, “buzzards gotta eat” I guess. I can’t tell anyone I work with about this because I could get in trouble for going against my client’s wishes, so I guess that’s why I’m writing about it here.A lot of you are probably hunters/farmers and this kind of stuff is normal for you, but for me it’s not. It was a very emotional experience; not good or bad, I think I did the right thing, just emotional. I’ve never really killed anything before (apart from some birds with a BB gun as a kid, and I remember feeling horrible afterwards). I’m not going to lie, I had myself a little cry in the car on the way home.The strange thing is that I unholstered my gun when I got home and looking at it gave me a funny feeling; like this thing isn’t just a cool toy anymore. I know guns aren’t toys and when you carry you always have the possibility of using deadly force, but I guess this just drove the point home for me in an emotional context.I still plan on carrying like I always do, and I don’t think I will hesitate to use it to defend myself if I have to, but today just made me realize how much I never want to have to kill anything or any one (not that I particularly did before, mind you).There’s no real lesson or moral to this story. Some of you probably think I’m being a giant baby, but for some reason I felt like I needed to write it down somewhere to process the emotions. Thanks for reading. via /r/CCW https://ift.tt/2Hvm96C