[Conservative Texan Mom]

Mostly I want to wring the neck of the people who dumped them. I don't know what they were thinking! If the dogs had presented a problem, they should have been put down. If they couldn't do it themsleves take them somewhere and have it done. It may sound cruel, but the poor dogs end up starving and suffering before going wild! I think some owners think a problem dog just needs room to roam, and that a rancher will take them in. That almost never happens. Our collie is an exception, and we took her because she was a collie. Also, the park ranger who found he had had her a couple of months and knew how gentle she was. Ranchers have to have dogs they can trust, unless it's a puppie, most will not take in strays. There is usually a reason someone dumped them, and that is usually the same reason that makes them a danger to people and livestock. It's too much of a risk! So, they end up going hungry and hurting other animals, or people, before someone shoots them. It makes me very mad.

[ahayes]

I think a lot of people are just delusional about nature and "the wild", and think their dogs will be "free" running around in the country. People treat cats awfully too. Every year I get emails through my university department asking if anyone can take in a cat that just got abandoned outside by someone who moved away. They think that the cat can hunt for food and that someone else will feed it, but they don't consider cars, dogs, and all of the diseases that they can get. If free-breeding cats have an average of five kittens per litter and produce several litters in their life, it's obvious that most have to die young or we'd be up to our eyeballs in cats. Our younger cat was rescued as a kitten from a parking lot--fortunately he came begging for food or he would have soon died, he was 50% underweight.

Wild animals can be subject to that kind of attrition and I find it unpleasant but tolerable, but for domestic animals we have already intervene in their fate and I think we have the responsibility to use more humane methods of population control.