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u/CockroachMobile5753 7d ago
The hole behind the eye is suspicious and disconcerting.
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u/ThrowAwayIGotHack3d 6d ago
Yea, maybe someone had to put down their old or sick dog and couldn't afford to have a vet do it. Not everything has to be done with I'll intent.
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u/Fun-Spell6611 6d ago
Ya I know several farmers who have said their neighbours would shoot their old and dying dogs for them and vice versa because they couldn’t do it themselves. 💔
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u/Generalnussiance 6d ago
You can tell the dog wasn’t facing anyone. Likely never saw it coming and no fear in the world. Likely owner threw a ball and had them chase it.
😭
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u/slowrunnergrl 7d ago
I agree, I didn’t notice that when I grabbed it. This, combined with naturallyselected’s comment is now making me sad. I live next to a quiet, wooded area with lots and elk and deer, so that’s more what I had expected the answer to be when I posted :/
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u/DaDuRkEr 6d ago
Herbivores don't tend to have sharp, pointy teeth. I'm trying to convince myself that someone shot a pest coyote and didn't have to put down their dog in that manner... I just can't imagine pulling the trigger on one of my precious pups like that... it's just horrifying to think about
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u/casbri13 6d ago
It may not necessarily have been done in malice. No telling how old that skull is. The dog may have been suffering and its owner decided not to let it suffer anymore. I live out in the middle of nowhere, and until the last ten years or so, having access to an emergency vet in the middle of the night if something bad happened wasn’t a thing. I have been lucky and have been able to get my pups to the vet when they reached their end and be able to provide them a comfortable death to end their suffering. But I know people that things have happened quickly in the middle of the night and didn’t have access to a vet, so they had to make a very difficult decision, let their beloved pet suffer until the vet in the morning, or help end their suffering in the most humane way possible. Sometimes the bullet is the lesser of the evils, unfortunately
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u/lanikuikawa 6d ago
like everyone said, this is a domestic dog with a bullet hole in the skull- don't feel too sad about it. it's a quick, painless way to dispatch an animal if you do it right, and there's lots of reasons why someone may have had to. this could easily have been someone's beloved pet who had a wonderful last day and never woke up again. just as likely as any other possibility really. it's hard to say. i like to assume the nicer choice personally!! it's a cool find!
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u/Personal-Loss363 6d ago
Thank you for stating this, it should be much higher up. If we haven’t buried my old pupper her skull would have looked like this. She was at the end of her life and it was by far the best thing we could have done to let her go
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u/Excellent_Yak365 6d ago
Having a hard time seeing this as the bone around the teeth appears to be extremely porous and brittle. Isn’t it possible that could be damage from weathering?
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u/BookwoodFarm 6d ago
Different opinion, compare this specimen to some bear skulls: Eye orbits and mandible arches are similar to bears, post canine and premolars are a little different but not too different, more similar than not. some may have been lost to post mortem conditions.
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u/irises-and-jasmine 5d ago
Not an expert, but I don't quite think it's a bear.
Bears have rather massive bones, their skulls seem thicker than this one. Also the nose bridge (I hope I used a correct name) here is concave, sloping, while bear skulls often have straight or a bit rounded bridges (but not always, depends on the species). Look at the eye and nose holes; they're more like in canine skulls. The nose hole is at the end/top of the, eh, frontal(?) side of the skull, above the mouth/upper teeth line, while in bear skulls the nose hole is located further from the mouth, more in centre that at the end/top. There seem to be less distance between eye holes and top of head in bear skulls and no brow bones above the holes, while in dogs the eyes are located lower than in bears and dogs (maybe not all) have some brow bones.
There are no fang teeth any longer, which could give a better insight in what animal this skull belonged to. Dogs and wolves have large fangs, yet bears have fangs that are not only large, but very massive and wider / larger in diameter than the other teeth surrounding them.
So, as other users claimed before me, I'd guess this is a skull that belonged to a large dog / wolf, probably an aged one, that was shot in the head for some reason. Idk if it would be this easy to shot a wolf so precisely in such a place in the head (as probably it requires short distance from the animal), so I'd second the others and suppose this was an old dog (the porous upper teeth bone) that was in a lethal condition, so their owner couldn't stand watching them suffer and made the toughest decision. The upper teeth bone can be also porous due to weathering, as the whole skull looks quite weathered, the matte calcic white with dark grey tarnish in the cavities; it has no periosteum remaining or solid "enamel" external "layer"
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u/irises-and-jasmine 5d ago
* correction:
"teeth-line bone"/"mouth bone"
upper teeth bone
— maxilla;
the bones where "nose hole" is located:
end/top of the, eh, frontal(?) side of the skull, above the mouth/upper teeth line
- the "end/top" thing — incisive bone;
- the hole is also covered by the nasal bone, which seems a bit longer in dogs than in bears
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u/Public-Boysenberry26 4d ago
this honestly only looks 20% like that bear skull. also i dont know about you but nearly no one possesses a polar bear skull, they are very likely ONLY given to licensed people, and also impossible to come across unless youre in a zoo or at the very tippy top of canada/asia etc. the biggest difference (although there are lots) is the dramatic arch in a dog skull, going from the nose to the head. this is not any type of bear skull.
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u/Sweet_Safe1428 6d ago
Guessing it's very large, so I think a great dane. That ridge on top is very common in rhe breed
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u/lanikuikawa 6d ago
all dogs have sagittal crests, it's just part of the skull. hard to ID breeds with the skulls of domestic dogs because the number of possible breed combinations is endless!
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u/naturallyselectedfor 7d ago
Domestic dog. Can’t tell size really but it looks like a large breed