Wandering Dogs

I have been silently following a thread on social media by someone who lost two of her goats to a neighbor's marauding dogs. The neighbor, after having her dogs shot and being taken to court, has made blog posts and fb statuses about how her dogs "never could have done that" and that the owner of the goats was in the wrong. Of course, after reading the posts by the dog owner, I'm convinced she has more air in her head than brain. The woman's dogs were caught on the goat owner's property having killed on goat, maimed another to the point it had to be euthanized, and were in the process of attacking a third; she (dog owner) is responsible for her dogs roaming and the goat owner was not at fault. Period, end of story.

However, as my grandmother would say, I don't have a dog in that fight. This post isn't about that situation, and I would personally rather not link to the woman in question as I feel that she is getting far more attention than she deserves.

Instead, I simply want to go over my experience with wandering dogs and make note of some dog characteristics. I'm going to recount some instances where I have lost animals to stray dogs.

My Experience 

The first animals I ever lost to a neighbors dog were rabbits. I bred rabbits when I was kid-preteen, and they were the first livestock species I owned (other than the family horse). However, I was raising them as pets, not commodities. At the time when I had first gotten three does, a huge mastiff was routinely doing his rounds through the neighborhood. Long story short, the mastiff literally broke into our rabbit hutch -- which was well constructed with wood and wire -- and killed my rabbits.

The second rabbit loss occurred at a later date and was caused by my own dogs. A storm came through in the night with strong wind. It blew over our rabbit hutch and opened our dog fence. You can probably put together what happened after that.

I have also lost chickens to a neighbor's dogs. This was the worst encounter. A German Shepherd and a Lab mix continuously got out of their owner's fence and came to our property to get our chickens. Our birds were in a fence; however, the dogs learned how to double team them and make them fly out. One would bark and run them from one side, and the other would do the same on the opposite side, until finally a terrified chicken would fly out and into their waiting jaws. This happened almost every day, and almost every day my parents (who wrongly believed that she would actually keep her dogs on her property and wanted to keep a good rapport with her) called and told her to keep her dogs up and that they were killing our chickens.

The neighbor's obviously did not do this, and we lost almost our entire flock. Then one morning while I was sleeping, the dogs caught one of our Pomeranians outside and killed her. The neighbors then took their dogs to be euthanized, and the story ended unhappily for all involved.

Misconceptions

The saddest part about all of this is that it could have been avoided. First of all, in our county there is a leash law, meaning that all dogs must be kept either on the owner's property or on a leash. Secondly, one of the many misconceptions that dog owners have is that their dogs will not kill other mammals. 

The attitudes of our neighbors (at least, as they appeared to be -- I don't know what they thought or felt, I can only go by their actions) was that it was "just a chicken." Of course anyone who owns chickens knows that losing them is a financial drain as well as an emotional one. Adult laying hens sell for $20 and up from individuals, and much more from hatcheries. Then there is also the value of the eggs, the time and money that was put into raising them from chicks, and the time and money that is required for us to replace them with chicks which we then had to spend time and money raising again before they reached laying age at around 6 months old. Also, in my experience, hens do not lay consistently until they are older than that.

Furthermore, once a dog has learned the behavior of killing, they will not change and the behavior can easily progress from killing one species to another, as was evidenced by our neighbor's dogs. No, not all chicken-killing dogs will also kill other animals, but for the most part it can be assumed that they likely will. If a dog ever learns to hunt and kill, it is very difficult to rehabilitate them and is many times impossible. It is for this reason that most dogs who have been trained into dog fighting must be euthanized and cannot be adopted back out by a rescue. Once that instinct has been ingrained in them, it is there to stay. Many older people will use phrases like "having a taste for blood" to describe this type of behavior. 

People believe that their precious Fluffy and Fido could never hunt and kill because they have been domesticated. As much as I would like to live in a world where that were true, it's simply not. Dogs have been bred down over many, many years into the breeds that we have today, but they are still a predatory species. Many breeds were actually originally bred to hunt, such as my grandmother's dachshund that was quite skilled at hunting and killing rats. He had never been trained to this behavior, but it was in his blood. Canines are built to hunt and kill prey, and though some breeds have been selectively bred to bond to certain species and only attack threats (LGD breeds), or to be typically non-aggressive in general, that is not only not the case for most breeds, but there are also still exceptions even within breeds developed to be non-aggressive. For example, one of LGDs will kill chickens if they fly into his pen. He was not raised with foul, so despite being kind and gentle with goats (including babies), cats (who he will let eat his food), and our other dogs, he will go after our feathered friends.

Just as we cannot train a cat not to catch a bluebird or dig up a mole, it's impossible to undo thousands of years of predatory instinct in dogs. While many dogs, especially those who are raised around other species from puppy-hood, do get along just fine with livestock species, the ones who have not been trained to be safe around chickens, goats, sheep, or even larger livestock like cows often still see those species as prey and not fellow pack members.

With the dogs that killed our chickens, even though their owner believed them to be dog safe and "couldn't believe" (her words) that they would do such a thing as kill another dog, the problem lay in the fact that they had learned how fun and tasty killing smaller animals was. Dogs don't necessarily differentiate between a chicken and another dog that isn't any larger than a large hen or a rooster. Bree was small, and therefore Bree was prey. Again, that isn't always the case, but it can be expected. I expected it and  gave this warning, but others did not understand or believe it. I understood because I had researched the issue of predatory dogs while preparing for my goats and again when prepping for my Livestock Guardian Dogs.

Yet another common misconception is that a livestock owner has no rights over dogs on their own property that are posing a threat to, or have already killed, their livestock. This is not the case. In my own state, as in most if not all, it is entirely legal for a livestock owner to kill a dog that is harassing, preparing to kill, in the process of killing, or has just killed livestock as long as it is on the livestock owner's property. It is not legal to follow the dog off of the property to kill it; if it has left the property, the owner of the livestock must go through the court system. The owner of the dog is legally liable for damage and losses caused by their dogs. 

These are the facts:  

1. It is the dog owner's responsibility to keep their animals on their own property. 
2. Dogs will hunt and kill livestock. In fact, they are notorious for this behavior among livestock owners, and for good reason.
3. Livestock owners are within their rights to take action against such dogs and to seek reparations from the dog owners.

Dealing with Wandering Dogs

I can't tell you how you should deal with stray dogs on your own property, or what you should do if you have incurred a loss. That is a judgment call that only you can make because only you know your situation. But I will tell you how I handle them.

First of all, I have livestock guardian dogs in with my goats, and have plans to add a third for my chickens when our perimeter fencing is complete. I believe that the best way to deal with livestock loss is to prevent it, and one thing that I will tell everyone to do is to have an LGD if they have small livestock like goats. For those living in an area with predators larger than dogs and coyotes (cougars, bears, wolves), I say have guardians for any species of livestock, and to have them in pairs. But unfortunately it's hard to convince some people that they need LGDs, and then those same people end up hurting after stray dogs kill their beloved goats (or sheep, chickens, what have you).

Secure fencing is also important, but fencing fails. Predators like dogs can dig under or even break through fencing with ease, or simply scare animals out of it like they did with my chickens. It's not enough to put up fences and have secure barns, because animals find ways into and out of fencing even when it seems completely secure. We have recently added a perimeter fence as well as our individual fences to add further protection and to protect our own dogs when they go outside, but I still do not trust it to keep other dogs out 100%.

When dogs roam through the part of our yard that isn't fenced -- like this huge bloodhound that has been running around the neighborhood lately -- I leave them alone so long as they don't bother things. I know that sometimes dogs run off. We have had dogs hit by cars, so I do completely understand that sometimes dogs go where we don't want them to. I also get that, just as fencing doesn't always keep them out, it doesn't always keep them in, either. We've had breakouts of our own.

But I have zero tolerance policy for any dogs harassing my livestock. I have tried the playing nice game, and it got me nothing but heartache and an anger that still has not completely gone away. If I could go back and do things differently and save Bree I would, but unfortunately that's not possible. What's done is done, and though we did the best we could at the time, we made the wrong choices. I won't make those mistakes again, and my parents wouldn't either.

Thankfully we have not had another instance of dogs harassing or killing our livestock, but if we did there would be no warnings to the owners to please keep them up. There would be action, and yes, I might go to court for reparations next time depending on the extent of the loss. 

I have been a dog owner much longer than I have had livestock. I have volunteered for dog rescues, and I have even fostered dogs for rescues. As I type this, there is a Pomeranian laying on a pillow by my desk and a rescued Collie mix sprawled out behind my chair. I love all animals, dogs included, but I still have a no tolerance policy with dogs harassing my livestock. I understand that the owners of dogs who have to be put down because of killing livestock hurt because of it. I would hurt if I were in their shoes, and yes I would be angry at the situation, but when it comes down to it if one of my dogs somehow escaped and attacked someone's livestock, I would accept the fact that they should have been on my property. (Of course all my dogs have been trained to be livestock friendly, but that isn't the point).

When it comes down to it, dogs owners accept a responsibility when they buy or adopt that cute little puppy. They have a responsibility to give it proper care, and they also have a responsibility to keep it on their property. At the end of the day, if the dog isn't where it belongs no one is at fault but its owner.

In Memory of Bree.