I’m overwhelmed by guilt, sadness and depression today.  I try to be a good person but sometimes I feel like I’m pretending to be something I’m not.

Sadie got an armadillo last night and I let her kill it.  The poor animal was in a bad way by the time I pulled the dog off it — blood pouring from its head, a front limb hanging by a patch of skin, staggering around. What was I to do?  I hate to be so practical, but the cold truth is that I have neither the time nor the experience to rehabilitate it.  It would have taken too long to get the dog in the house and get a gun to put it out of its suffering, and the armadillo was mobile enough that there was no guarantee that it would be still be there when I got back.  So I let go of Sadie, turned around and went into the house.

Sadie doesn’t play around.  When she goes after something it’s to kill it, not to toy with it, so she finished the job quickly.

But the doubt gnaws at me.  Maybe a good person would have tried to rescue and rehabilitate the animal? Did I let my dog finish this creature off because it was an inconvenience to nurse it back to health or because it was already dead?