Strictly speaking, I am not a "farm girl" since the last time I lived on a farm, I was 1 yr old. But here's why I think I can say "this is not normal": my dad grew up on a farm (and so did his dad). I grew up in a small town in rural Iowa (a state which neighbors S Dakota), so it was unavoidable that many of the people I knew growing up were farmers or from farming families. Other friends weren't farmers, but did raise some chickens and sheep or goats for 4H and had working dogs.
My grandma's family were farmers in Missouri, and until very recently my uncle farmed that land.
So I'm very familiar with at least how Midwestern farmers tend to treat their animals, and no, shooting a dog without an extremely compelling and urgent reason is not what you do.
Farmers may be more comfortable with using a gun to put an animal down than urban folks, but that doesn't mean they are any more gung-ho about making the decision that a dog needs to die. Why would they be?
@artemis I'm in absolute agreement as somebody who did spend my adolescence on a farm and did have to deal with occasions where we had to put animals down (horses in our case and because of medical issues like colic that we were not able to help them with after trying).
Which we did via a vet because we loved those animals and were not overly cruel. Unlike this woman.
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