Granted I don't know the full story. I don't know if these people have a habit of letting their dog wander about. But not everyone just "lets" their dog wander off their property. Sometimes accidents happen.. some breeds of dogs are even known as escape artists! Huskies can scale anything under 6 feet. Some can dig under despite the best intentions of the owner.
Personally, I'm glad to see the owners owning up to their dog's actions and doing what they can to fix the damage their dog did. How many stories have we seen on here in which the dog owner denies what their dog did or just plain refuses to offer any compensation? How many have we read about where the dog owners shrug it off and do nothing to even try to make sure their dog doesn't get loose again?
My own border collie, Diamond, has aggression issues towards other dogs. We're aware of them, we've worked tirelessly with her on them. She is a lot better, however, because of her past tendencies, we'll never be able to be completely at ease about her behavior around others. She tends to act up if I am not their to ensure she remains disciplined. But she is still a border collie who is very curious about her world and has wanderlust. She has escaped twice, but thankfully, nothing happened either time.
Once.. I let her and our sheltie out to do their business in the backyard. Unfortunately, I did not know that my father had workers over earlier in the day working in the flower beds who had unwittingly left one of the gates open. The gate is on the far side of the house.. its actually impossible to see from inside the house, you have to walk over to that side to see it. We rarely if ever use it (mainly because the dogs favor that part of the yard to leave their gifts). Our sheltie stayed in the yard, but Diamond didn't. I didn't realize she was gone until I opened the door to call them back in and only our sheltie returned. I immediately went looking for her and quickly found her a block over, exploring someone else's front yard. She returned at her recall command. After this, I worked on training her not to leave our property boundaries without me. So.. am I an irresponsible dog owner because of what happened?
Now, Diamond tends to walk quietly.. one evening, she followed my father into the front yard. He apparently didn't notice her following him as he went to get something out of his van. She went over to sniff our mailbox.. he went inside and closed the door. Thankfully, this happened around the time I tend to feed them dinner and when I went to give them their dinner, once more, I only had a sheltie waiting patiently. Since it wasn't storming (Diamond's storm shy), I didn't think she was in hiding, so I called for her.. no answer. I asked my parents if they'd seen Diamond since the last place I had seen her was when she was sleeping on the living room couch. They hadn't. Come to find out.. my training had held and Diamond was sitting on the welcome mat just outside the front door, waiting to be let back in. So once more, thankfully nothing happened. But am I still an irresponsible dog owner?
We can do our best, but sometimes.. they will get out. Sometimes by accident, sometimes by cleverness, and unfortunately sometimes by willful negligence. I think what's important is that these owners are trying to work out a plan for the future and offering to repay the damage caused. Will this bring back those poor chickens? No.. but accidents do happen.
