Owners should be responsible for actions of free-roaming dogs
TO THE EDITOR:
A free-roaming dog has an owner and a home and provided food and health care. However, that is generally the extent of the owner’s attention.
Dogs are social animals and need human companionship, but this dog is left along for hours and hours with nothing to occupy its interest. Bored to the point of going “bonkers,” it becomes a free roamer as a way to combat boredom and quickly turns into a killer.
Newborn baby rabbits, warm and snug in a hole in the ground dug by the mother rabbit and lined with fur pulled from her own body, are killed but seldom eaten since a free-roaming dog is well fed at home. Ground-nesting birds such as quail, geese, ducks and turkeys are also this bored killer’s victims.
Free-roaming killer dogs know no boundaries or limits and have no respect for life. The natural instinct to hunt has become twisted into a sport for these dogs, and they hurt and kill animals and fowl protected by game laws in and out of season, with no regard for bag limits and no purchase of hunting licenses.
The owners of free-roaming dogs are aware of their dogs’ actions. They have eyes. They can see. They are told by their neighbors what their dogs are doing. They know their dogs are killing animals and fowl, injuring and killing neighbors’ pets and eating neighbors’ pet food. Their reactions are generally the same. They defend their dogs: “Did you actually see my dog doing that?” or “How many times did you see my dog do that?”
The truth is some owners of free-roaming dogs are really using their dogs to hunt and kill animals and fowl protected by game laws in and out of season without a license. Some actually use the dogs to harass neighbors.
Well, it’s time for society to protect itself from free-roaming dogs and their owners. It’s time for society to create a law or laws that will hold owners responsible legally and financially for whatever the dogs do.
We need a law similar to the litter law that holds a person responsible whose name and address are found in a bag of trash deposited on the roadside or in some sinkhole or stream. Courts regard names appearing on envelopes, empty prescription bottles, subscription magazines and so forth as conclusive evidence of guild. It’s a state law.
I appeal to Warren County political leaders, our elected, trusted, respected district commissioners: Create a bit of social progress for Warren County. Enact a county ordinance or something that holds a free-roaming dog’s owner legally and financially accountable for the dog’s actions. But please, no leash law! A leash law is unjust and inappropriate. It would punish non-free-roaming dogs as well.
Sincerely,
Gene Prater
Midway