It’s been my experience that many dog owners ‘generally speaking and not to include EVERY dog owner, are inconsiderate of neighbors and others in general. They seem to have this mindset that because they have/love/like dogs that everyone else feels the same way and as such everyone else is ok with whatever they, the owners, are ok with with respect to the animal. You have people on here concerned about the neighbors hearing their roosters. Case in point, if your dog owning neighbor has a perpetually barking dog have they ever shown any concern that the barking may bother you? Chances are pretty good they have not. To me, they seem to think that they can impose their barking dogs on everyone, and violate leash laws at will BECAUSE dogs are somehow these revered animals that supersede the value and importance of other animals and certainly of other people. If the animal is not controlled, and a dog is an animal nothing more nothing less, and causes harm to others(animal or people) there should be some accountability. I’m guessing the dispatching of any other animal that caused death or injury to another(got that first taste of blood) would be acceptable as long as that thinking doesn’t extend to the glorious, all important dog.
This is where we keep getting stuck, I think, on this thread.
We have dog lovers who would never harm a dog. Nothing wrong with that. We have people at the other end of the spectrum (not necessarily dog
haters, but people who maybe don't care for them as much, or who see them as any other predator) who have no issue with killing a dog when necessary or, unfortunately, on sight without provocation. Like I've said, necessity is situational. Some people straight up can't risk losing their livelihood to a predator. Some can but would rather not because of the time, money, and work it takes.
It's a polarizing topic because dogs are, for good reason, man's best friend. They have literally evolved alongside humans for at least tens of thousands of years. We have bred them to do everything from work to just being our buddies. However, they are still predators at their core. Which is why care needs to be taken wrt training and containment. That is the owner's responsibility, not the responsibility of whoever owns the property that the dog wanders onto.
But! I have to wonder if some of this back-and-forth comes from a fundamental misunderstanding of dog behavior? Some people on this thread are... Very preoccupied with the idea of a rabid/aggressive dog busting down their fence to get to their pets/livestock/kids. So much so that I'm beginning to wonder how much these people actually know about dogs in the first place, beyond the fact that they're technically predators. I mean, a dog killing a chicken or cat or whatever else isn't a sign of aggression
on its own. There are other signs to look for: body language is a big one but it's not easy to assess a dog's body language when you're in the middle of a chaotic situation. Would you call a wolf killing a prey animal aggressive? Unless you're severely misinformed, probably not.
I don't know if this is cohesive and coherent. I'm tired. Basically, yes, dogs are very important to some people. What's wrong with that, genuinely? Chickens are probably important to all of us here (otherwise, what's the point of this discussion?). Obviously there's nothing wrong with that either. A dog is not fundamentally more important than a chicken, and a chicken is not fundamentally more important than a dog. They both have worth as living creatures. What we do with that just depends on our situation.
