“in Tennessee it’s common practice to drop a dog off in the middle of nowhere.”
One of the worst things we noticed when we moved to TN is how people take care of their pets — in that they DON’T take care of their pets. Of course, not everyone is that way, but it’s so much worse than in any place we’ve ever lived.
For our first six years here we lived in the middle of Nowhere, an area that people used as a dump site for their unwanted pets. That’s how we ended up with eight indoor cats.
They’ll leave dogs chained in a filthy yard without food or water. We’ve taken food and water to them while their owners watch us from indoors.
It’s very sad. TBI supposedly set up a division to address this problem but it seems it hasn’t helped.
My sister has two dumpster curs and a few more mutts that she has had previously, and barn cats which are self-sustaining in that they cycle through because Critters get cats during the dead of night...
She’s is also actively involved with a rescue that only rehomes dogs to homes outside of Tennessee... specifically “Outside of Tennessee” - it’s that bad.
I was down visiting in 2017 helping her get the farm started up that spring, and there was a small independently owned grocery in The Crossroads close by and we stopped over there one afternoon and there’s a dog in the parking lot. A nice looking mix, tall lean friendly going from car to car and my sister said “that’s a drop off” and we got the dog she went inside the grocery & apparently the dog had been around the parking lot for a few days. We took it back to her place, then a couple days later we went towards Nashville and took it to a well-organized rescue kennel and that dog was going out of state.
Drop offs are everywhere in Tennessee, and wild dogs feral or dropped are not tolerated in livestock or hunting country.
Also, here in rural Alabama we are plagued by semi-wild strays and poorly cared for dogs. They eat our free-range chickens and have attacked our neighbors livestock (e.g., sheep, goats, and pets including small dogs. There is no animal control other than ourselves. I shoot at them all the time. One of them even looked part husky.
People dump dogs in the Everglades.
Some of my FB friends have rescued Dobermans out of the swamps.
People suck.