Much ado about nothing is more accurate. Putting a nuisance dog or any animal down is common especially around farms etc.
Correct. The people who are flipping out about this also don't understand that in rural South Dakota, you don't have your pick of animal shelters or vets to take the dog to. This isn't NYC we're talking about.
Are you going to waste a whole workday to drive 100 mi or more roundtrip to take the dog to the vet, just so the vet can kill it with a shot of pentobarbital, instead of you doing it with a shot of lead? Between the fuel, the lost time and the vet bill, we're talking way more than $500 here.
Do y'all think a farmer puts a sick cow that isn't going to make it in a truck and hauls it to the vet so the vet can euthanize it? Why is a dog different? Because you don't own a cow? Don't be silly.
Study up sometime on the chicken industry, and what they do with the 50% of chicks that are born male. Intact males of any species are hard to raise -- they fight viciously with each other -- and not as good to eat, and castrating a male chicken is a non-trivial surgical procedure. Hint: they don't take the male chicks to the vet to euthanize them. You won't view your chicken sandwich the same way again.