I just saw a dog almost get hit by a car

I was walking my dog on a sidewalk next to busy residential road. I live by the local elementary and middle school and they had just let out for the day so there was steady unending flow of cars. I notice some lady walking up talking on her cell phone and her dog wasn't on a leash and it came bolting up to my dog and I. We proceeded to casually walk past them and her dog decided to run across the road.

Some soccer mom SUV slammed on the brakes about a foot before hitting the dog and the car behind the SUV hit it. Meanwhile there's a 30 car traffic jam building behind with a chorus of honking. I continued on my walk wondering what that lady was thinking not having her dog on a leash when walking along a busy road.

I think you should have to pass some kind of IQ test to be able to own a dog. But shelters are full as it is. Would it be worse to:
A) Give a dog to a completely incompetent owner (where it probably won't live to see 5) and is possibly a hazard to other people and pet owners and/or malnourished and exposed to inhumane conditions
or
B) Euthanize it in a county shelter.

 

I don' think that there is an answer for either of your questions.

Hopefully most owners are between the two extremes.

 

Most but not all

 

While I agree that not all owners are what they should be, I also think that many pets are fortunate in the homes they have.

People are people and they do what they do. Age old problem and there is no solution to that.

 

People who let their dogs off the leash (not in a dog park or field) are the ones who need to be euthanized. I don't care how well your dog is trained or how much you trust it not to run off, it's still an animal with instincts and if it sees something it wants to run after, well, the above stated is exactly what's going to happen. It sucks that those people got into an accident but at least the dog wasn't hurt and hopefully (but doubtfully) the the imbecile on the cell phone will think twice about letting the dog free range next time.

Seriously... it's such stupid little things like not wearing a seatbelt or taking your dog off the leash that cause accidents that are 100% preventable.

 

i saw a drunk guy run over a possum the other day. doesn't really relate to anything, i just really wanted to bitch about this guy after being stuck behind him driving 10 mph under the limit for about 10 miles, then seeing him blatantly smack this animal without even tapping the brakes.

 

i dont think not putting on a leash is stupid necessarily.
but to answer the question, i'd rather let stupid people own them, rather than kill them

 

The error lies with the soccer mom who should have hit the dog and if he wasn’t dead she should have pulled a geena davis (long kiss goodnight) and snapped it's neck


Hotwater

 

Some people will just hit anything. I live by the highway and I've seen possums, raccoons, even turtles out of our pond get hit, and no one bats an eye, even when they really kind of should. I remember once my mom drove out of the driveway with a crockpot on the back of her car. It fell off when she pulled out of the driveway and a minute later (as I was running out to the road to grab it, mind you), a guy zooms through doing fucking 70 or something stupid and hits it. The ceramic is already shattered inside, but now it all comes spewing out in big chunks, and I thought, 'well, asshole, serves you right if you get a flat tire half a mile down the road from the ceramic embedded in it.' Genius. Really smart. It wasn't in the middle of the road, and it's not a narrow road, fucking go around. What is this infantile drive to just hit things with your car because you're bigger?

On a lighter note, we have Canadian geese raise babies here every year, and they go across the road in long lines to get from my neighbor's pond to mine and back. It's the ONLY THING that motorists will stop for. In the 5 years I've been here, they've done it every year, and not ONCE has someone hit them. They'll stop and pile up 10-15 cars back until that last little gosling makes it to the grass. Strange world.

 

Well the woman had to learn somehow I guess. At least no one was hurt in the incident, and she will think twice the next time, or at least pay a helluva lot more attention to her pet.
And in my opinion, simply killing off the dogs is a stupid move. There are much bigger things they could do to lower the rising population of dogs. Like cracking down on puppy mills for one thing, or selling more and more dogs with non breeding agreements.
Classic human reaction, if it isn't working, kill it.

 

Yeah, cracking down on puppy mills and closing the pet stores is just going great. They just had an article in the paper about an Amish guy who was breeding yorkie puppies and had a whole barn full of them, but with the recent closing of so many pet stores, he couldn't find anywhere to unload them. So he gassed them with carbon monoxide. All of them. He's up on charges now. He tearfully (do you have any idea how hard it is to make a Mennonite or an Amish guy fucking cry? they're like made of steel) recounted the story to the papers about how he didn't want to do it, but he couldn't support them all and all of the shelters were too full to take on that many dogs, so he did what he felt he had to do because he couldn't afford to do anything else. They're pressing charges saying it was animal cruelty because he didn't take them somewhere where they could get the shot, but you know what? Death is death. A whole barn full of dogs was just slaughtered (whether by gas or by needle) because rather than regulating and routinely inspecting pet stores, we're just closing them. Oooooh, breeders are evil! Pet stores are evil! Well, we're doing a bang-up job cleaning up the mess aren't we?

 

There are a lot of four legged disease bags running around here, but I still can't help myself from cringing every time I see one run into traffic like an aimless idiot.

 

here people walk their dogs without leashes on the busy road all the time, and all the ones I've seen are really well behaved, It's kind of bizarre. I did see a dog get hit once, it got loose and was trying to bite car tires as they passed by and it got it's head ran over, but bolted off right after.

 

I'm in the city, so not leashing would get you a fine. We do have off-leash dog parks here, so there isn't much of an excuse.

My peeve is when people don't pick up their dog's shit, especially when they have shit right in the middle of the sidewalk.

 

If anything drivers should be targeting the geese considering the mess they generally leave behind


Hotwater

 

Honestly I think some humans need to be put down...such as my next door neighbors who live in a 650 sq. ft. apartment. Three people, 6 cats, and 5 dogs to be exact. I have called animal control on them several times but no one cares except me. I feel so sorry for the poor animals.

 

Yeah, this bugs me as well. Animal control probably can't do much legally since in the eyes of the law the animals are not "technically" being neglected, since they have food and shelter, and depending on the county's occupancy laws, probably don't exceed the limit of animals allowed in a household.

How many times do you see on those Animal Cop shows animal control officers being denied warrants to seize the animals because they "technically" have food and shelter so they "techincally" aren't being abused or neglected. It's fine that the dog lives outside year-round, chained to a post with no human or animal interaction whatsoever, because he has a flap of cardboard over his head and a rotting pig's ear in his bowl

 

I know, it makes me sooo angry! And I can hear them barking all day when the people are not home.

 

I've seen people do this, and it wasn't for security or because they liked dogs. They just thought it was cool to have a dog like most of the neighbors.

.

 

Don't you think it'd be better to just put the dog down when it's young instead of making endure that kind of life?
I'd rather be put down than live like that...