Dogs That Are Dumped in Rural Areas

My brother's in laws have a second home in a rural area in Northern California. They go up there on weekends.

They have two horses up there. They've got a nice arrangement with a woman who breeds horses who is their neighbor. She takes care of them during the week and they take care of them on the weekends.

Last week, they found one of the old horses covered with cuts on its legs. After watching a bit, they found there is a pack of stray dogs in the area that is attacking the horse. The animal shelter is working with them. They've set up traps to try to catch the dogs before anything worse happens.

The fact of the matter is people up there have a completely different attitude about pets. More than once my brother has found kittens dumped on their property. Last year, a whole litter of kittens was placed in a box within their gate. They were so young that they had to be bottle fed. I think there were 6 and 2 survived.

It is the same with dogs. People decide they don't want them any more and they dump them on someone's ranch land. They don't have them spayed or neutered and they then have litters out in the wild.

Is this type of thing a problem where you live? Down here it's the suburbs we don't have issues like this. Dogs wouldn't be able to survive alone very long. But, up there some people don't seem to care at all. As you can see, their dumped pets then can attack someone else's animals (or even people, though I don't know if that has happened). It makes me so angry to see this happen!

 

Many years ago I rented a rural house and a few acres with my girlfriend on the outskirts of Perth,Western Australia.. We had a menagerie of animals including a white and a black sheep. I came home from work to find these sheep had been skinned alive by dogs. The dogs had left by the time the police came who had to shoot my sheep. I was really angry that this pack of family pet dogs had got together and were terrorizing livestock on surrounding farms.
These days, now living in Tasmania, 30 miles from Hobart, I have two wild dogs roaming the bush around my property.I have a infra-red movement camera what is also known as a trail camera set up to take photos of native animals. On two occasions, several miles apart I have captured these wild dogs on video.Their diet would be native critters. wallabies, betongs.potaroos possum etc.

 

I'm sorry to hear about your sheep, Argon. A friend of mine lose her goat because it was attacked by a stray dog. She was devastated to say the least.

I've heard this from a number of my friends living in the rural areas. Some of the dogs are lucky enough to have adopted themselves into new homes but there are still others out there trying to fend for themselves. I don't understand why people would dump their dogs there. I think it's plain irresponsible but I guess, on a more positive side, I would assume that they are doing this because the dogs might have a fighting chance of surviving there than where they probably live.

We live in the city so most stray dogs scavenge for food in the garbage cans. We use to have dog pounds but it seems to have disappeared.

 

There should be no reason why these days domesticated animals go wild.But it still goes on.
In the distant past in my country camels were freed by camel drivers from the Asian Sub Continent and now the wild population is a million. They are culled for meat and sent back live to the middle east as diseased free animals and used by local people for various reasons.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian_feral_camel
Then there were buffalo from Indonesia which are destroying tropical wetlands.
http://www.nqccs.com.au/library/pests/feralanimals/buffalo.htm
And horses.
http://www.nretas.nt.gov.au/plants-and-animals/animals/feral/horse
And
Pigs,donkeys, goats,dogs ,cats and more.

 

In Thailand, or at least where I used to live, stray dogs are not a problem. The main reason is that everybody looks after them. There are many people who would even pay the vet to come and vaccinate them.

 

That sounds so wonderful. If everywhere on this earth people could be so kind to our furry friends.

 

The Thais look at it as getting free security services.

Like the lane that I used to live in. It's a dead-end lane about 300 meters long. At the head of the lane, there is one group of strays. At the middle, there is another group. And at the end, where I live, one more group again. All three groups do not mix.

All the people in the lane feed the strays in front of their houses. Nobody, who is a stranger, can get into that lane and out again in one piece if there isn't anyone living in the lane to tell the dogs to take it easy.

Win-win situation, isn't it? Even better than hiring human security guards. Humans can be bribed. Dogs can't be bribed. Humans may fall asleep. Dogs don't. Not while they are on guard duty. You may hold up a security guard if you have a gun. However if you are faced with a dozen attacking dogs, a gun wouldn't save you.

 

That's quite an amazing story. I've never heard anything like it. It is almost out of a novel or a movie. The dogs make the area safe for the humans.

 

That is interesting, Victor. Do the different groups of dogs ever stray into each other's territory and cause problems or do they stay in their own place? Since humans are feeding them, the dogs must feel more like part of the human pack than the ones that are roaming freely up where my brother is having a problem.

 

The dogs are very territorial. Each pack has got very clearly defined boundaries. When I first moved into that lane, I had problems taking Candy out for walks. However, after some time, the dogs there accepted her as part of the pack even though I always kept her inside the house because I didn't want her to kill any of the dogs outside.

Yes, it may seem like something out of a fairy tale but it's happening in real life. The first thing that's needed is a genuine love for the dogs. Thais, generally speaking, are dog-lovers. If someone really cannot keep a dog at home anymore, all he has to do is take it to the nearest temple and leave it there. The dog will be adopted by the monks and it will have a very good life in the temple because everyday people bring food to the temple to feed the dogs.

They call it "Tham Boon" which translates roughly as "make merit". Well, "Tham Boon" must still first start with a genuine love for the dogs, right?

I know of one wonderful lady whose house is right opposite a temple. The first time I met her, she was ordering a few 50-kilogram sacks of premium dog food (well, not Royal Canine but not a no-name brand either) and making an appointment for the vet to come over to vaccinate the dogs. I asked her if she was looking after the dogs at the temple. She said no. She was looking after the dogs in front of her house. The dogs at the temple were already well-looked after, she told me.

 

Few cases here in our area. Just like our recent dog that we just found near our house.Just left alone and we do not have idea where our dog exactly came from. He was around 2 mos. old when we found him straying.

 

Stray dogs are rather controlled in my area because we have two animal shelters and people will take them to the shelters. Most of the time, they hardly put the dogs or cats own because my MIL makes it her mission to ensure that the animals have a proper home to live in. If she could take a few more in, I know she would do it without a second thought.

I can't bear to be in a situation such as the thread-starter. If I were your brother, I would be livid at the way people are living and treating those animals. Dumping animals in various lots are never okay! Mann I wish I could sue these people.

 

Sue them? I have a better idea. Actually it's not my idea. My vet is the one who started it.

What he did was buy a piece of land on the outskirts of town. Then he fenced it and built sheds for shade. After that he paid some people to look after the place. From then on, whenever he found a stray puppy, he would take it there. He pays for the food himself but he has a donation box on the counter for anyone who wants to do their share.

 

Aww...that's a great thing to do! Now I wish I had the money to do the same myself.

 

Well, you don't have wait until you have a lot of money. You can start doing your share by donating to some rescue shelter in your locality. Just make sure that the rescue shelter has an absolute no-kill policy.

 

Sadly it's a big problem where I live. Pets are seem as disposable. When they are not abandoned they are often kept in less than ideal situations, such as being tied up all the time or left on small balconies and never exercised.

The worst abuses tend to be of hunting dogs which are often hanged at the end of the season. Heartbreaking.

 

Hanged? That's horrible! Why do they do that? Here, hunting dogs are treasured. Even the old ones which cannot hunt any more are looked after until the end of their natural lives.

 

It's a real shame that selfish cruel people dump dogs or any animal for that matter. It happens in New Zealand but rarely enough that I've never come across it myself. While I was on holiday on a pacific island the bed and breakfast's neighbour drowned his unwanted puppies because he didn't get his dog desexed. I was 8 years old at the time and was mortified that the cute, friendly little puppies I saw a day earlier had been put in a sack and drowned. If we had known they wanted homes for the puppies we would of tried to help or got some sent to New Zealand to rehome to family friends. I think the penalties for such a crime should be higher.

Victor Leigh it was heartwarming to hear about how people care for dogs in Thailand. Now I see why you think dogs make such good guard dogs.

 

Ah, if only you really knew everything that went on in Thailand. The people that I talked about who loved dogs are Buddhists. Maybe it has something to do with their religion. They believe in rebirth. So if they do a lot of bad things this time round, the next time they may be reborn as an animal. Maybe if they ill-treat a dog in this life, they may be reborn as a dog in their next life and they will be ill-treated in turn.

The Muslims in South Thailand are Malays and they do not like dogs. This is not related to Islam actually because I have been told by friends who studied in Egypt that the Muslims in Egypt keep dogs as pets. But for the Malays here, the attitude towards dogs is more or less "The only good dog is a dead one".