Contain (and train) your dogs

The rural/suburban interface contains no end of potential conflicts for the humans who choose to live there and the animals they own, and perhaps no animals are more commonly at the center of neighbor disputes than conflicts involving uncontained dogs and livestock. Many people like living on large lots, but fencing is costly, so loose dogs are a frequent concern in areas where people keep chickens, rabbits, goats, sheep, and other animals.

A friend forwarded a January 3, 2023, article to me from a newspaper that serves the semi-rural community where I went to high school. The article tells the story of a tragic event that occurred in mid-September 2022, about a family whose dog was accidently let loose by the owners’ grandchildren, who tried in vain to call the dog back. Within minutes, the dog wandered to the unfenced yard of a next-door neighbor, where he began chasing the neighbor’s chickens, catching and killing two of them.

As the dog raced about, chasing the squawking chickens, one of the dog’s owners, a woman in her 70s, pursued the dog with a leash, calling his name – and then, seeing him actually grab one of the chickens, began screaming at the dog in horror. She has limited mobility, however (she had hip replacement surgery the previous month), and fell at several points in pursuit of the dog. Hearing the hubbub, one of the owners of the chickens ran outside and began screaming at the dog’s owner in anger – and was quickly joined by her husband, an off-duty police officer, who emerged from his house with a gun and began chasing the dog, yelling. The owner of the dog manages to grab him, and fasten a leash to his collar, but he was still fixated on the chickens and managed to pull away from her, and she fell hard on the ground again.

At that point, the couple that owned the chickens were both screaming, with the wife yelling at her husband, “Shoot it! Shoot the f***ing dog!” With the dog’s owner still on the ground, and the dog about 20 feet away, the husband shot the dog three times, angrily yelling, “That’s my right! That’s the law! F*** this!” as the dog’s owner sobbed.

All of this was captured by the chickens’ owners’ home security cameras, and submitted to the newspaper by the chickens’ owners.  The newspaper released the footage in a link. (Warning: Though you hear but do not see the dog get shot, the footage is extremely upsetting.)

As the newspaper article said, “Not surprisingly, the [families involved] don’t agree on what happened before, during or after the shooting.” The shooter claimed that the dog had previously menaced him on other occasions when it was loose, and that the dog turned and lunged toward him. The dog’s owners say the dog never moved toward the shooter, and was shot in the back, and that the shooter’s children had played with the dog previously. Whatever the facts are, the most indisputable is that the dog is dead. His dog’s owners transported him to a veterinarian, where they made the decision to have him euthanized due to his extensive injuries.

To make tensions between the neighbors even higher, two weeks later, the owners of the chickens set up a macabre “Halloween” scene in their front yard approximately where their neighbor’s dog was shot: a plastic skeleton of a dog sitting up, in a howling-at-the-moon pose, and a plastic human skeleton lying the ground next to the dog, with a leash in its hand, in their front yard. Woof.

Lessons, but only for those who will learn them

I’m sorry for everyone involved here: the dog, his owners, their grandchildren, the chickens, and even the chicken owners, despite the violence of their act and the needless and insensitive display in their yard. The anger and bitterness between all the surviving parties is sure to last years – and it was all avoidable. Here’s how:

• If a dog has escaped his enclosure even once, serious steps must be made to prevent this from happening again. This is especially true if there is livestock in the area and/or if the dog has shown any interest in chasing birds or other animals in the past – or if the dog has ever chased a human or another dog with aggression. The dog owners had a fenced yard where the dog is ordinarily secure, but something happened when the grandchildren were outside with the dog. Keep gates securely locked – like, with a padlock – if there is anyone present who may be unable to prevent the dog from slipping out, or is not 100% able to manage the gate. Or install an “airlock” – a system of two gates that prevents an accidental escape. If the dog climbs or jumps over, or digs under, fences, he needs to be secured in a small covered pen on concrete when he’s not on leash.
• Train your dog! In my opinion, teaching a dog a reliable recall, “proofed” under conditions that are made progressively more difficult for the dog as he learns and succeeds, should be the responsibility of every dog owner. No dog is perfect under all conditions, but a decent recall saves lives.
• If someone (especially someone you know) is chasing their loose dog in obvious distress, help them catch their dog or chase it away! It’s highly upsetting to lose your chickens or any other pet or livestock, but the lack of empathy shown to the dog’s owner (shooting her dog in front of her, while obviously injured, she sobbed helpless on the ground) in favor of protecting the chickens, is absolutely inhumane. Once the loose-dog incident was over – had the owner of the chickens helped the dog owner catch or chase away the dog – all of the humans could have made a plan to keep everyone safe in the future. Surely, a peaceable relationship your next-door neighbor is more important than acting rashly on your righteous anger.

It’s much better to prevent dog-related disasters than to deal with their aftermath. Owners need to take full responsibility for damage inflicted by their loose dogs – and this can involve far more than dead chickens. Any rancher in California will tell you that they lose more sheep, goats, and even cattle to loose dogs than to coyotes or mountain lions. I read one account where a human lost their life in a car accident, swerving to avoid hitting a loose dog. Please, do everything in your power to contain and train your dogs!