Goodwin’s girlfriend called to tell him “Big Boy has been shot,” he said.

“I left work and went straight home, found my dog dead in my yard,” Goodwin told The Telegraph on Monday.

The deputy who killed Big Boy was nice enough, Goodwin said. The two talked about their shared interest in automobiles.

Then, James Hollis, a sheriff’s investigator, showed up with questions about Big Boy’s vaccination records.

What happened next unfolded in a series of short videos Goodwin took of the encounter. Some of the videos were removed from Facebook due to their graphic nature. Others have garnered tens of thousands of views.

“I knew I had to have some way of proving this,” Goodwin said. “I just don’t think I was supposed to be the one to remove my dog’s head the way they made me do it.”

One video opens with Hollis threatening to take Goodwin to jail. Goodwin asked what he would be charged with and the other officer responded, “you can be charged with disorderly conduct.”

“You can sit there all you want and try to record all you want to record,” Hollis says in the video.

“I’m protecting myself. Y’all come up to me… I’m reacting to having to cut my … dog’s head off,” Goodwin shouted.

“We asked you to remove the dog’s head,” Hollis said. “And you’re refusing, right?”

“I ain’t got a … knife to cut” the head off, Goodwin said.

“If you would just listen,” the other officer cut in. “We don’t know this process either.”

In a video taken after the decapitation, Hollis and the other officer can be heard giving instructions to Goodwin’s girlfriend. Big Boy’s head was placed in a white plastic bag.

“She gonna place that into the bag and they got to freeze it,” Hollis said in the video. “That can be tested for rabies, OK?”

The other officer gave the woman a phone number and told her to “meet them at the health department in Roberta with the head. Give her a call in 15-20 minutes.”

“Tonight?” she asked.

“Yes. It has to be done tonight,” the officer said. “They have to put it in the refrigerator overnight.”

The woman told The Telegraph she cried as she drove the dog’s head to the health department at 7 p.m. that evening.

On Monday, Goodwin told The Telegraph that the officers offered him the option to call a veterinarian and pay to have the head removed. However, with three young children around Christmas time, money is tight.

I don’t know what happened with the neighbor, but there are ways to handle it if the dog attacked someone off of the property.  As for the cops, here’s a quick note to the Crawford County Sheriff’s office.  Your men shouldn’t have been on the property without (a) requesting permission to enter the property, and (b) requesting that the dog be secured.  Acting wisely would have required that your men wait until the owner returned from work to disposition the claims.

A man’s property is sanctified.  It is set apart, not for your fun, work, or entry.  This doctrine comes from the Scriptures.  The Castle doctrine has roots in our Christian heritage.  As for decapitating the dog, that’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard.  You could have called animal control and had them transport the animal to the lab for testing.  If all else failed, the individuals involved could have gotten the series of shots required to ensure that you don’t get rabies (that’s what one of my sons had to do, and while it isn’t the most pleasant thing in the world, it isn’t the end of the world).  That the deputies demanded this gruesome display of idiocy is one of the most redneck, ignorant things I’ve ever heard.  That they lied to the man about being arrested and going to prison is in character for LEOs, none of whom can be trusted.

It’s a shame that the animal perished, but it’s not so bad that the LEOs got bitten.  I couldn’t care less.  The only thing that would have made this story better is if the dog had lived, the LEOs got rabies, and the LEOs lost their jobs for failure to follow proper procedure (if not, for being just plain stupid hicks).  Hey, why don’t you hire decent and thinking men instead of men who would respond, “When in doubt, behead?”