Sister's cat killed by 3 German Sheppards...Should the dogs be put down?
2014-09-05T13:57:46Z
My sister's cat was just lounging on the front pouch 2 days ago and the neighbor's 3 German Shepherds from down the street got out of the yard, came over mauled the cat....basically tore it to pieces. Of course my sister is heartbroken. She will be filing police reports tonight. Question: Isn't this excessively violent behavior for dogs and should they be put down for this? This could have been a small child playing on the front porch and the dogs could just have easily have killed a child inst
2014-09-05T14:00:47Z
My sister rents her house and the owner does not allow pets inside, so the cat (that she adopted) had to stay outside. She had no choice.
?2014-09-05T14:03:32Z
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The neighbor should be cited by the police for not keeping the dogs SECURELY fenced in--I've had dogs all my 60+ years and none of our dogs have ever been able to get out of our yards. Especially when you have large dogs, no matter how friendly and "docile" they may appear to the owner, they yard they are allowed to be in MUST have fences sufficiently high and secure so the dogs cannot get over, under, through them no matter how hard they try, and any gate must be strong enough and locked enough to prevent the dogs from getting through. That might mean the dog owner needs to pay a LOT of money to have a secure fencing system put in but that's the price you pay--as you said, what if it'd been a small child the dogs got ahold of instead?! There's no way to compensate your sister for the killing; I don't think putting the dogs down is the solution although the owner should be apologizing profusely. There's no way to bring the cat back. And, incidentally, if the cat was not allowed to roam outside freely, you would have to deal with this kind of situation. Dogs will attack and kill cats. You can't blame the dogs. You can't blame the cat. It's all the human beings that are at fault.
All parties involved are at fault. Dogs are just one of the many dangers a cat faces if you let it outdoors. The cat should have been kept indoors (the only safe outdoor option is an escape proof outdoor cat enclosure) and the dogs should have been kept inside a fence at least 6 feet high. A fence with a height lower than 6 feet isn't tall enough to contain a German Shepherd. Dogs in a group are like kids in a group, they will egg each other on and do things that one dog alone might never even think of doing. Now that the dogs have done this, unless they are properly secured in an enclosure adequate to contain them, they are likely to get out and go looking for trouble again. The dogs should not be euthanized for their behavior but they should definitely be confined to an enclosure secure enough to hold them.
The dogs were at fault because they trespassed into her yard and killed an animal that wasn't threatening them in any way. This could have just as easily happened to a child. Dogs can be very dangerous when they get into packs and they will often do things that they wouldn't normally do if they were by themselves. I am always nervous when I see groups of loose dogs and I will go out of my way to avoid them.
No. Dogs aren't euthanized for killing other pets. They can be cited and fined, but euthanasia would not be an option on the table. Killing a small animal does not indicate that the animals are in any way a danger to humans. Human aggression and killing a prey animal are very different and separate behaviors.