An Iowa man was accidentally “shot” by his dog as the pair was roughhousing on the couch last week, and the dog triggered his owner’s handgun that was in a holster on his body at the time.
Richard Remme, 51, of Fort Dodge, did not suffer serious injuries, the Messenger reported. He was taken to the hospital and was released that same afternoon.
“I carry. It’s a Ruger 9 mm, and it’s got a safety on it. I was lying on the couch, and we were horsing around, me and the dog. And I was tossing him off my lap, and he was jumping back on my lap,” Remme explained.
Remme said the dog somehow disengaged the safety and set off the handgun.
“And I carry in a belly band, under my bib overalls. And apparently he bumped the safety one time, and when he bounded back over, one of his toes went right down into the trigger guard. It has a trigger safety as well as a thumb safety, and he managed to hit both of them, and it discharged and went into my leg, did no major damage to anything,” Remme said.
The dog, who is a pit bull-lab mix named Balew, was upset after the incident, according to Remme.
“The dog’s a big wuss. The poor dog laid down beside me and cried, because he thought he was in trouble for doing something wrong,” his owner said.
Fort Dodge Police Chief Roger Porter said: “He [Remme] has a license to carry, and a license for the gun. It was a freak thing.”
“I’ve never heard of that,” the police chief said. “I’ve heard of guns dropping and going off on the floor, and horsing around and guns going off. I can’t say I’ve heard a dog story before.
“Guns aren’t toys, and they can go off. All it takes is a little pressure on the hammer or the trigger to get it to go,” Porter added.
Remme told police that he didn’t feel the shot in his leg at first. He noticed a painful burn on his stomach and then saw that his pant leg was soaked in blood.
“I’m looking around to see where it went to, and I realized it went in my leg. That’s when I called 911,” Remme said.
