
Firey devastated after pet dingoes shot dead
IMAGINE fighting the raging bushfires and then coming home to find your dogs had been killed.
That's the sad reality for Georgica resident Murray Ings, who thought it was strange his pet dingoes didn't greet him after he'd been away fighting bushfires.
As a forester, Mr Ings has an agreement with the Environmental Protection Agency to assimilate dingoes that have been bred in captivity back into a more natural environment.
The dogs were encouraged to reconnect to nature as much as possible and trained to survive on his property and be self-sufficient in terms of hunting and finding water sources within the boundaries of his property.
So Mr Ings was not worried about leaving his beloved dingo Bindy and her two pups to go and help the Jiggi RFS with the bushfire efforts.

But when he came home days before Christmas, his dogs were nowhere to be seen.
It wasn't until one of the pups showed up at his doorstep clearly distraught that he knew something was wrong.
"They didn't come home, only one came home ... so I started asking neighbours had they seen them," Mr Ings said.
"One guy I spoke to said he heard there was a lot of big shooting up at my place, and then the sound of screaming dogs.
"Someone had come onto my property and took out two of my dingoes but didn't shoot them dead.
"I still haven't been able to find them.
"The pup that survived, we found him on the Wednesday, and he went into a mental meltdown.
"All I could do was hold him and calm him down for four hours straight.
"I think he'd found them because he's not leaving my place.
"It's just wrong what's happened."

Mr Ings said he contacted the NSW Department of Primary Industries and the NSW Police, which are investigating the trespassing and shooting allegations, but there have been no developments.
"It's really annoying, they've trespassed onto my property, and still nothing has happened," he said.
"I've been away on the fires and to come down for this to happen makes me really annoyed because they were special dingoes, they were pure and not vicious.
"Who would go and do something like that?
"All the neighbours know my dingoes, these were captive bred, the pups were third generation.
"The mum was a treasure. Bindy, the mum, had eight pups, they all went to big properties and the people who have them just adore them."
Mr Ings encouraged anyone who might have seen or heard gunshots on December 14 around the Georgica area to contact Crime Stoppers 1800 333 000.