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* Done literally in the beginning of ''Literature/TheAbsolutelyTrueDiaryOfAPartTimeIndian'' by Junior's father to his dog Oscar since the family can't afford a vet.
* ''Literature/AnimalFarm'': The hens are promised that, once the humans are overthrown in the revolution, they'll get to keep their eggs and hatch them into chicks. But once Napoleon takes control of the farm, he orders that the hens surrender their eggs for money. So the hens stage a short rebellion by smashing their eggs rather than letting the pigs take them by force.
* Rachel has to do this a lot of times in ''Literature/{{Animorphs}}'', so much so that by the end it's considered [[TokenEvilTeammate just part of her character]]. For example, she's the one who [[spoiler: forced David to be trapped in rat morph.]]
* Anita of ''Literature/AnitaBlake'' [[spoiler: brutally tortures and kills a man to gain information about where Richard's mother and brother are being held]] in Blue Moon. She decided to do it instead using slower methods due to the revelation that [[spoiler: they were being tortured and raped.]] Several of Anita's people begged to be allowed to ''Shoot the Dog'' for her, but she decided she couldn't ask anyone to do something she refused to do herself. This is the moment she identifies as being the trigger for setting her on the path of becoming a sociopath.
* In the ''Literature/BelisariusSeries'' by David Drake and Eric Flint, the title character delegates the task of killing helpless prisoners to his bodyguard, Valentinian, because he can't bear to do it himself. Belisarius has been posing as a like-minded ally to the bad guys, and killing the prisoners is necessary to maintain his ruse.
** In the same series, the good guys are trying to evacuate a place called Charax that's under seige. Except there's some brutalized female survivors too close to death to move, and leaving them behind for the enemy is...not a good option. One of the other survivors picks up a knife, stone-faced, and orders everyone else out of the room. When she comes out, the narration notes she even took time to clean the knife.
* ''Literature/CardForceInfection'': Destroying an infected card doesn't remove the infection from the person, only stops it temporarily. Given this, [[spoiler:the Blade of the Nephilim opt to put infected players into comas to take them out of action indefinitely.]] Whether this is a good or bad thing is a ''major'' point of contention.
* In ''Literature/TheChroniclesOfAmber'', Corwin's blinding and imprisonment is shown to be a shoot the dog moment long after the fact. [[spoiler: Julian explains to Corwin that if Eric had left him alive and at liberty, the Bleys-Brand-Fiona cabal would have almost certainly killed him in short order. Blinding was the only way to leave him alive, but harmless. Also, Julian suspected that Corwin would eventually regain his sight (though Julian honestly admits that while he ''hoped'' that would be the case, he was far from certain of it).]]
* In ''Literature/TheChroniclesOfThomasCovenant the Unbeliever'', Kevin Landwaster did this on a huge scale prior to the beginning of the series. When he saw that the Council of Lords was going to lose the war against Despite, he performed the Ritual of Desecration as a combination of this trope, SenselessSacrifice and TakingYouWithMe.
** This led the subsequent Lords of the Land to the Oath of Peace, as one of their leaders put it, if it comes down to a choice of Desecration or Defeat, then they will permit themselves to be defeated rather than desecrate again.
* In Robert Newton Peck's ''Literature/ADayNoPigsWouldDie'' the teen protagonist must [[spoiler:kill his pet pig to feed his family]].
* A particularly notable instance occurs in Creator/TerryPratchett's ''Literature/{{Discworld}}'' novels. In his later "Witches" books, it is revealed that Granny Weatherwax, a major character of Pratchett's, has had to Shoot the Dog more than a few times in her witching career, with few regrets. In fact, Granny considers part of a witch's job description to be making tough life-or-death decisions so other people don't have to.
** Perhaps the greatest example of this is Granny Weatherwax, while acting as midwife, choosing whether to save a man's child or his wife after a childbirth goes badly. Someone told her afterwards she should have allowed him to choose. Her response? "What has he ever done to me [[SadisticChoice that I should hurt him so]]?"
** In ''Literature/TheFifthElephant''. Angua (the werewolf) asks if Carrot (her boyfriend) would [[spoiler: "put her down" if she became as crazy as her brother. Carrot answers yes. Angua smiles and asks "Promise?"]]
** The biggest example of Shoot the Dog in the series was in ''Literature/NightWatchDiscworld''.
--> ''"Just in case, and without any feeling of guilt, Vimes removed his knife, and... [[MercyKill gave what help he could.]]"''
** Willikins engages in a few of these during ''Literature/{{Snuff}}'', in part so Vimes - who's already testing his personal limits during the book - doesn't have to. In addition, Wee Mad Arthur's sideplot sees him having to give the same help Vimes did in ''Night Watch''.
** In ''Literature/TheLastHero'', the Librarian accidentally stows away on a rickety DungeonPunk spaceship on a mission to avert [[EarthShatteringKaboom the destruction of all of Discworld]], throwing off the calculations for air and dragon power. Vetinari and the wizards, serving as MissionControl, disagree on how to handle the situation. Vetinari suggests throwing him off the side. When the wizards object, he suggests chopping him up and feeding him to the dragons propelling the spaceship instead.
-->“You can’t ask them to make a decision like that, sir!”\\
“Really? I make decisions like that every day,” said Lord Vetinari.
* In ''Literature/{{Divergent}}'', [[spoiler:Tris has no choice but to shoot Will, who, under mind control, was trying to kill her]].
* In ''Literature/TheDresdenFiles'' book ''Literature/{{Changes}}'', [[spoiler: Harry does this brutally. A great ritual has built up enough magic to enable a sacrifice to destroy a bloodline; Harry and his family is the target for this, but the Red Court Vampires aren't being picky. And by the time they get there, the ritual HAS to go off, or the results won't be pretty. So what does Harry do? He prods his ex-lover and mother of his child to ask TheMole [[ArmorPiercingQuestion questions that lead to her going berserk]], murdering him, drinking his blood, and completing her [[BodyHorror change into a Red Court Vampire]]. The resulting distraction allows Harry to disable everyone else there, and [[MercyKill use the newest vampire of the Red Court]] as a sacrifice to target the spell.]]
** Made the more painful by the fact that it was ''avoidable'', the situation had arisen because of a long chain of very human and understandable, but still very bad decisions on the part of various people, but esp. Harry and Susan. [[spoiler: One of the themes of the DF series that has emerged is the critical importance of free will, and how good decisions usually produce good results, and bad decisions...the Archangel Uriel has been kind of 'coaching' Harry on this, but Harry has been a bit of a slow learner on the subject, and it's cost him dearly. Susan has an even worse track record of bad choices, and paid an even higher price.]]
*** Making it even worse, it is fully implied, if not outright stated, that TheMole, was, in fact, [[spoiler: a DoubleReverseQuadrupleAgent whose true alignment was ''against'' the Red Court, and this was his plan all along!]]
** The Wardens of the White Council have this as their job description. It's their duty to carry out the death sentences of those who break the Laws of Magic, even if the lawbreakers are teenagers who haven't even ''heard'' of the laws before. However, the ''reason'' these laws are in place is that BlackMagic is inherently corruptive, and use of it makes murder, MindControl, necromancy, EldritchAbomination summoning, etc. seem ''[[ItGetsEasier right]]''. By the time the Wardens get to the lawbreaker, they're usually just putting whoever it is out of everyone else's misery, since this corruption means that BlackMagic users cross the MoralEventHorizon ''very'' quickly.
* Happens often in ''Literature/TheForestOfHandsAndTeeth'', though the aversion of this sets the plot in motion. Mary's mother is bitten by her zombie father, and instead of being killed before she can turn into a zombie, she decides to just be allowed to turn. Later on, her brother's wife Beth becomes a ZombieInfectee and has to be killed before she turns, despite her brother's objections. Even later on, Mary's lover is infected and she ends up having to behead him herself.
* In ''Literature/TheGunslinger'', Roland is forced to choose between finally catching the Man in Black (the only one who can tell him how to reach the Dark Tower) and [[spoiler: saving young Jake from falling to his death. As a clue to which he decided on, let's just say he found out how to get to the Tower]]. To be fair, in Roland's mind, anything is permitted because Roland believes the entirety of all existence (and, indeed, non-existence) is at stake. And [[spoiler: Jake [[UnexplainedRecovery gets better.]]]] And [[spoiler:Roland's belief happens to be right on the money]].
* ''Literature/TheGunsOfNavarone''. Captain Mallory has discovered that Anna is a traitor and is forced by the circumstances to execute her. As he prepares to do so, Anna's friend Maria shoots her instead so Mallory doesn't have to.
* In ''Literature/TheHandmaidsTale'', the main character and a fellow handmaid are forced to witness a supposed rapist being murdered via an angry mob of women egged on by government officials. Her companion, however, knows that the man is actually a member of the resistance who has been caught, and the only thing she can do in order to avoid giving herself away as a traitor is to kick the man violently several times in the head until he falls unconscious (or dead), sparing him torture at the hands of the mob before he dies.
* ''Literature/HarryPotter'':
** [[ItWasHisSled Dumbledore arranges]] for [[spoiler: [[SadistTeacher Snape]] to kill him]] in the 6th book for three reasons -- [[spoiler: to protect [[SurroundedByIdiots Snape's]] TheMole position with the Death Eaters, because he knew Voldemort had already ordered [[TheBully Draco Malfoy]] to kill him and he wanted to spare the boy the fate of being a murderer and to [[DePower depower]] the [[InfinityPlusOneSword Elder Wand]][[labelnote:note]] The Elder wand chooses as his new master the one who defeat his old master. Snape was following Dumbledore commands which doesn't count as a defeat, thus the wand cannot be reclaimed by anyone ever again.[[/labelnote]] to prevent it from falling in [[BigBad Voldemort]]'s hands. Although the act of Snape killing [[BunnyEarsLawyer Dumbledore]] is initially viewed by [[TheChosenOne Harry,]] the readers, and [[SadistTeacher Snape himself]] as a villainous act, [[EccentricMentor Dumbledore]] had previously asserted to [[TallDarkAndSnarky Snape]] that it would be treated as a [[MercyKill mercy killing]] and wouldn't carry the same moral repercussions that cold-blooded murder would -- because Snape knew that Dumbledore was already weakened and irreparably doomed to die from the curse on Gaunt's ring.]]
** Snape [[spoiler:passing Dumbledore's message (via [[PensieveFlashback memories]]) that Harry must let Voldemort kill him. It's plausible that Dumbledore knew that Harry would survive, but Snape certainly didn't know.]]
* ''Literature/HonorHarrington'': Citizen Admiral [[spoiler: Thomas Theisman]] decides that Haven has had enough show trials:
--> ''[[PreMortemOneLiner Goodbye,]] [[spoiler: [[PreMortemOneLiner Citizen Chairman.]]]]''
* ''Literature/HoratioHornblower'' does this a few times.
** It's hinted in ''Lietuenant Hornblower'' (told from William Bush's point of view) that either he or an abused midshipman named Wellard pushed their insane captain down a ship's ladder to remove him from command.
** In ''The Happy Return'', he orders some sailors to stop trying to get a cannon off of their friend's leg to cut away sail wreckage instead so they can maneuver the ship--it's noted that having to give such an awful order gives his voice an hysterical edge.
** A particularly tragic scene in ''Ship of the Line'' switches to the perspective of soldiers marching along the coastline, most of whom are conscripted Italians who don't really want to be on this long, hot, miserable march and welcome the diverting sight of a ship. They even wave at it. The ship--Hornblower's ''Sutherland''--then opens fire, slaughtering them by the hundreds (if not thousands). Hornblower notes with disgust that while his men are happy enough to kill other men, they all groan when he orders them to shoot down the pack animals.
* The man who later becomes John Clark in Creator/TomClancy's ''Literature/JackRyan'' novels tortures a guy he captured for vital information - using a pressure chamber to induce the bends. He also does other things like assassinating people, and a cat-and-mouse game with some {{Big Bad}}s near the end. But you can't say you weren't warned: the book's title is ''Without Remorse''.
** Clark's morality is best exemplified by a line from ''Rainbow Six'': "Sometimes he would break those laws, but that was only in the service of them."
* ''Watch on the Rhine'' from the ''Literature/LegacyOfTheAldenata'' contains a group example, when Hans Brasche order "only old SS will engage. New men are not to fire except in point self-defense." The situation is that a [[BackFromTheDead resurrected]] Waffen SS is being attacked by a horde of Posleen using massive number of human shields. The new men can't bring themselves to fire on their own species, but the old SS have done it before, so... Actually, there's probably at least one instance of Shoot the Dog in every novel in that series.
* In the ''Literature/LymondChronicles'', Lymond frequently has to take these kinds of actions. The worst is when he [[spoiler: saves his friends and defeats the BigBad by ordering the death of his own two-year-old son. Later, he whips one of his men nearly to death as punishment for a minor error in order to prevent the tsar from killing the man for sure.]]
* ''Literature/TheMazeRunner'': In ''The Death Cure'', after a rather painfully sad amount of buildup, Thomas is forced to [[spoiler:[[MercyKill shoot Newt]], his best friend, to save him from fully becoming a Crank]].
* In the second ''[[Literature/MistbornTheOriginalTrilogy Mistborn]]'' book, Vin literally kills a dog so that her shapeshifter (who can only take the shape of the creatures he's eaten) can impersonate it and follow her around inconspicuously. (She's also kind of disgusted by the thought of him eating people, even people she just finished killing.)
* In ''Literature/MosesManOfTheMountain'', in divergence with the [[Literature/TheBible biblical]] version of events, Moses is forced to [[spoiler: kill Aaron on Mount Sinai because of his poisonous influence on the Hebrews]].
* In ''VideoGame/{{Myst}}: The Book of D'ni'', [[spoiler:former slave Ymur]] goes all HeWhoFightsMonsters to the point of [[spoiler:not only attempting to slaughter the Terahnee to the last child, but also setting himself up as a new master]]. [[spoiler:Slave child Uta, who used to respect him, knifes him (though Ymur evidently lives long enough to kill him).]]
* In Creator/JohnSteinbeck's novel ''Literature/OfMiceAndMen'', protagonist George is forced to pick up a revolver and kill [[spoiler:his mentally handicapped best friend Lennie]] who has inadvertently [[spoiler:killed Curley's wife]]. George's reasoning for this is to spare [[spoiler:Lennie]] from a horrible death at the hands of [[spoiler:the inevitable lynch mob.]] This trope is also shown in a lesser extent earlier in the novel (with an ''actual'' dog, and with the same gun too!).
* In ''Literature/OldYeller'', the main character is forced to kill his own beloved dog after realizing that it has surely contracted rabies and will die a slow, ugly death and put others in danger before doing so.
* This is why Commander Thrawn shoots the Vagaari ships covered in [[HumanShield living shields]] in ''Literature/OutboundFlight''; the captives were going to be killed anyway, there was nothing they could do to help them, and the Vagaari had to be stopped.
* UsefulNotes/AlexanderTheGreat did this several times and in Mary Renault's ''Literature/ThePersianBoy'' the most logical reasons are presented. After uncovering a plot to assassinate him, he kills Philotas the instigator, and also has his father Parmenion killed. In Renault's version, this is so there won't be a big blood feud, as Parmenion is in charge of troops and supplies guarding the army's rear. When Alexander kills the 7000 Punjabi mercenaries, Renault says this is because after he'd defeated these soldiers, he'd signed them up (or thought he had -- there might have been a bad translation) to work for him. But they began packing up and moving out in the middle of the night, which boded no good. He knows history will look down on him for it, but "it was necessary".
* In Creator/DerekRobinson's ''Piece of Cake'', Barton shoots the dog. The dog's master had just been killed, so it was either a {{mercy kill}}ing, or he did it to stop the dog howling so he could get to sleep. Or because the dog wouldn't stop pissing on people's legs every chance it got. That's why it's called BlackComedy.
* Karen Pryor wrote a whole book about [[http://www.amazon.com/Dont-Shoot-Dog-Teaching-Training/dp/0553380397/ how not to do this.]]
* In ''Queste'', the fourth book of ''Literature/SeptimusHeap'', Septimus and Jenna fight the Toll-Man and throw him down the [[BottomlessPit Abyss]], causing a HeroicBSOD in Jenna. It is revealed that the Toll-Man was under DemonicPossession then and almost managed to kill Septimus.
* ''Literature/ASongOfIceAndFire'':
** Eddard Stark takes it upon himself to kill his daughter Sansa's pet direwolf Lady at the queen's order rather than allowing the prince's creepy bodyguard to do it, because if he does it himself then at least he can minimize Lady's suffering and prevent her pelt being taken by the queen, and because he thinks the direwolf shouldn't have been a pet in the first place and will become a danger to people other than the evil prince. Later, he realizes that his children's direwolves were indeed sent by the old gods to protect them and that killing one was a foolish mistake.
** Jaime Lannister sees himself as this regarding his most infamous deed, the killing of King Aerys. Lannister was part of the Kingsguard, an elite group of bodyguards and protectors sworn to defend the King and the Royal Family. However, Jaime knows just how psychotic Aerys was, having witnessed his many atrocities first hand. [[spoiler:Between the realization that Jaime was only ever accepted into the Kingsguard to be a hostage used against his father, and the knowledge that Aerys was planning to burn down the entire capital city rather than surrender to the rebels marching against him, (a city of more than a million people) Jaime decided to kill Aerys and all the pyromancers involved to avert this]]. As a result, Jaime sees himself as a dog shooter. Everyone else sees him as an oathbreaker with ChronicBackstabbingDisorder, which is not helped by Jaime's general JerkAss nature and refusal to disclose what really happened.
** Rickard Karstark wants Jaime dead for killing his sons, in a fit of rage he killed Willem Lannister and his squire when they were Robb Starks hostages. Robb then beheads Rickard for disobeying his orders.
* In ''Literature/StarTrekNewFrontier'', the much talked-about Grissom incident came down to a war tribunal started by Calhoun's captain. Calhoun, charged with mutiny by said captain, stepped in to stop him from killing the leader that led him to this madness (by killing the captain's brother and daughter). He comes to the conclusion that ''he'' must kill the leader. However, he does it in a way that could be construed as self-defense because the leader handpicked a phaser off of the captain. Calhoun resigns anyway because even after Shooting The Dog, he failed to keep his captain from committing suicide.
* ''Literature/{{Stinger}}'': During UsefulNotes/WorldWarII, Sarge adopted a stray dog named Scooter, but had to shoot him to keep him from bringing a grenade to the unit's foxhole when he mistook a skirmish for a game of fetch. Years later, it still haunts him.
* In ''Literature/TheSunneInSplendour'': UsefulNotes/EdwardIV decides to murder his saintly, half-mad rival for the throne, Henry IV to prevent further bloody rebellions from forming around the old man. Edward does the job himself, because he doesn't want to order anyone else to kill an innocent man. The whole business makes the normally affable Edward very melancholy.
* Although it's built up like this to a degree, the mass murder of [[spoiler: Zalasta]]'s cronies in Creator/DavidEddings' ''Literature/TheTamuli'' trilogy is kind of an aversion. Not only were the dogs in question rabid, but some of the deaths and corpse disposals were just so damn ''funny''.
* In ''Literature/ThoseThatWake'', this is done to [[spoiler:Brath]] as hopelessness corrupted him beyond saving.
* The nigh-pacifistic Atticus Finch in ''Literature/ToKillAMockingbird'' shoots a rabid dog. The fact that he took off his glasses and fired [[InstantDeathBullet just one shot]] from a good distance, astonishing his son, makes it arguably a [[Awesome/ToKillAMockingbird Moment of Awesome]].
* In ''Literature/{{Victoria}}'', a lot of protagonist John Rumford's [[IDidWhatIHadToDo ruthless but necessary]] actions could arguably qualify as this, but the one he takes most seriously himself is the nuking of downtown Atlanta to stop the genocidal [[DirtyCommunists Commune]] and end the civil war in the New Confederacy. He still thinks it was necessary and would do it again, but when he meets the Nazis later, this forces him to accept that he is not so different from them as he would wish to be.
* In Creator/DanAbnett's ''TabletopGame/Warhammer40000 Literature/GauntsGhosts'' novel, TheMole, revealed at the end, sneers that Gaunt has no proof and won't shoot him without it -- he's read his file. Rawne retorts that TheMole hasn't read ''his'' file and shoots him.
* ''Literature/{{Worm}}'': [[spoiler:Weaver]] shoots [[spoiler:Aster]] in an attempt to prevent Jack's Slaughterhouse Nine from [[spoiler:causing the end of the world]]. Somewhat strangely this isn't really treated as a ShootTheDog moment, as it's blink and you'll miss it quick and it ''never comes up again''. In the end [[spoiler:Aster has nothing to do with the end of the World]], though leaving her alive with the Slaughterhouse Nine would have been AFateWorseThanDeath in any event.
* In ''Literature/AWorldGoneMad'', Jack Bauer-esque AntiHero Agent Griffin's whole philosophy is that someone like him has to do horrible things in order to protect the naive, peace-loving citizens who don't even know he exists. The joke is that he's ''horribly incompetent''. So, not only does he kill civilians, cause the death of innocents, double-cross his own allies, and torture prisoners out of necessity, he often ends up killing, double-crossing, or torturing the ''wrong'' civilians, innocents, allies, or prisoners who have absolutely nothing to do with whatever evil plot he's trying to stop. It helps that he's a SociopathicHero and KarmaHoudini.
* ''Literature/TheYearling.'' Does a very good job of illustrating the consequences of ''not'' shooting the [[strike: dog]] fawn.

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