The show about the people living along the Yukon on The Discovery channel covered the subject of dog euthanasia a few weeks ago.
It was a simple matter of catching enough salmon to feed the dogs through the winter or eliminating some dogs. Just letting the dogs starve would have been the cruelest act of all.
Dogs would also be released in islands in the river and left there to fend for themselves all summer, they'd learn to catch salmon swimming upriver. Also when they'd stake dogs along river, dogs had water and learned pretty quick to catch fish in the river. Indians didn't have to take care of dogs all summer.
We had a preacher that also trapped. He took a dogteam and killed them one by one, used dead dog as bait set for wolves, no joke; that even bothered me some.
Another local started eating his dogs one by one a few winters back; ran low on food, couldn't find any moose; true story.
I wanna kiss the animals wouldn't make it here in Alaska.