I can understand people protecting their livestock. Perhaps my compassion would diminish after the millionth dog harassed the critters that represented my livelihood, or just came on my property and harassed the critters who belonged to me and were on my land. Maybe it's the difference between people who can eat critters that they helped birth and raise, and those who could never eat meat from an animal they had merely glimpsed or viewed a picture of.
@Yvonne Smith There certainly is a big problem in this county with hunting dogs unrelentingly chasing deer. I often hear them in the middle of the night. There's also a problem with some "hunters" just setting their dogs free at the end of each season so they don't have to care for them. The next season, they just pick up fresh ones.
The ones that are a problem in north Idaho are not hunting dogs, just farm dogs, left outside to “guard the farm” during the day. When they get bored, they start to wander, or even just that a deer comes though their yard and they chase it away. Once they chase the first deer, they want to do that all of the time, and actively hunt for something to chase. With livestock, even if the dog is not trying to hurt the animal, once they panic and start running, the whole herd of cattle will run, and can run right into the fence, thus cutting themselves up to the point they have to be put down. They might get caught in the fence, and if that happens, they will probably shred themself up trying to get loose from the fence. A hunting dog is out there because he has been trained to hunt. The farm dog is supposed to be home guarding the property, and not out chasing deer or livestock. I have had to have horses sewn back up by the vet after someone’s errant farm dogs got in my pasture and ran the horses into the fence.
One thing I've noticed is people can't understand why you don't get more upset when wild animals kill each other. They expect you to intervene all the time (except when it has to do with killing snakes ), and think you are a cold-hearted person if you don't at least try. Sure, I get upset when I see it, but you can't control the whole world.
I am not sure about that, @Frank Sanoica . I know for sure that they are not immune to venom from a copperhead or cottonmouth. I came home to find my goat dead in the pasture from a snakebite, when I lived in Missouri. There were supposed to be some rattlers there, but the snakes we mostly saw were either a copperhead or a cottonmouth; so I am pretty sure it was one of those. Either way, the venom killed the poor goat.
On a related topic, while I would prefer that my cats didn't kill birds, chipmunks, and small rodents, and I would particularly appreciate not receiving gifts of snakes, dead or alive, I have to recognize that hunting is pretty much what cats were made to do. I have thwarted a couple of kills that were about to occur in my presence, and fortunately, my cat seems to have thought that I'm just a dumb SOB who doesn't know the first thing about hunting, rather than that I intentionally interfered. But when my cat makes a gift of whatever it was that she hunted down, I have to recognize that she succeeded in doing what she was made to do, and it would be rude not to praise her and thank her profusely. Having had several cats over the years, I've also noticed that, at least for my domesticated cats, there are only a couple of years when that is a regular thing. Ella has kept it up longer than most, but the only things she's brought me in the past couple of years have been mice and snakes. As far as I am aware, she has killed only two birds and one chipmunk in her career. She has developed a taste for grasshoppers and I've no idea how many of those she has killed and eaten, but I have seen her go through at least a half dozen of them. Cutie and Lydia lived to be 26 and 28, respectively, and I don't think that Cutie ever hunted anything, ever. She seemed to show no interest in it at all. I watched Lydia pounce on a robin once. She held it for a moment, then lifted her paws and let it fly away. As far as I know, that was the only time Lydia had stalked anything. Their mom wasn't a hunter, either. I don't leave them completely on their own outdoors for long periods of time, however. Every half hour or so, I check on Ella. Usually, she's lying on my outside desk, on my chair, my car, or on the back steps. Sometimes she's in the library, the door to which I leave open just wide enough so that she can get through if she needs to escape something, or it rains on her. Sometimes she walks down the tracks a little way or goes into the yard of the now vacant house next door. Nearly all the time, she will come running in response to a call or a whistle, and often I don't even have to do that. When she doesn't, she's grounded for the rest of the day and the next day, and she seems to have made that connection. Last night, she didn't come when I called her. I couldn't find her, and I was worried because the sun had gone down. Then someone nearby set off a firecracker and she came running out from under the shed of the vacant house next door. She still didn't come home, though. I had to go get her. So she's grounded today, and not pleased about it. I grew up on a farm, and everyone in my family hunted. Although I liked being in the woods, and I enjoyed shooting guns, I wasn't interested in hunting. But, I view hunting as a positive tradition and wish more people would come to understand the relationships between living things and the stuff they put into their mouths. Too few young people are interested in hunting today, and I think the result has been a few generations of people who don't understand reality. Unlike many, I have no significant fear of snakes, although coming across one unexpectedly might startle me. I grew up in the UP of Michigan, where we have no poisonous snakes, and I currently live in Maine, where we have no poisonous snakes. However, when I lived in Southern California and in Texas, I came across perhaps more than my share of rattlesnakes. While I was, I think, reasonably cautious of them, I have often gone out looking for them. When I lived outside of Corona, California, it was a short walk to canyons where rattlesnakes could fairly easily be found, and I did that often. For several months, I had one living within a woodpile just outside my door. I often carried a walking stick then, and I could impress my friends by striking the woodpile on my way out to elicit a rattle. I referred to it as my guard snake. When I was in Elsa, Texas, I killed a large rattlesnake next door to my house. I wouldn't have killed it but my neighbor's 12-year-old daughter was home alone with a friend, and I heard her scream. The snake was by their front door, and I was afraid that if I had simply chased it off, it might come back, and I wouldn't have felt very good about it if either of these girls were bitten. I don't generally feel the need to kill a snake, though. Even a poisonous one, as they all have their place in the ecosystem.
I live in a semi-rural place. Just yesterday a car stopped a few yards from my place, the people got out of the car, then leaning on a fence, one pointing and saying, "Isn't that disgusting, the people round here allow their cows to poo everywhere all over this field?"
Even though I was raised on a farm, I've never had any desire to live in a rural area. Kind of the opposite of my sister, who loves being isolated on farmland. Once when she visited here, we were out on the patio drinking coffee one morning. She gazed around the yard and at the neighbor's houses and said, "how can you stand this??" We live outside the city but in a subdivision on a river. We get plenty of critters here, but thankfully no livestock. The wafting smell of a hog pen in summertime is something I can do without.
At one house I lived at in Oregon my dog would chase the neighbor's chickens. I couldn't break her of it and had to make her an inside only dog - a shame because she was a big dog who loved the outdoors.