The Animal KIngdom

I have a moral conundrum as a dog owner.  Here's why...

Growing up in Montana, wildlife had their dominion and men had theirs, and unless we were trespassing into their space up in the mountains and forests surrounding our town, rarely did the two meet face to face.  I understand from people who live there now that times have changed, and as we humans encroach more and more into their space, animals like elk, deer, coyotes and mountain lions to name a few have returned the favor and wandered into town with increasing frequency.  The way I see it, they have no choice.  We're squeezing them into smaller and smaller spaces, and they're just trying to survive in a world that no longer has boundaries.

Well, western Pennsylvania got to that point long before the sleepy little town where I grew up.  So, here we sit, 9 miles from the Steel City, the very bustling metropolis that fed steel to the world for decades, and we share this space with minimally deer, turkey, skunks, ground hogs the size of tricycles - I mean, seriously, they are huge and smelly - raccoons, hawks, geese, an occasional eagle, the normal array of song birds, robins and crows, squirrels, field mice and bigger rodents.  And bunnies.  Hundreds and hundreds of bunnies.  And a neighborhood full of dogs.

Some of our past visitors

But interestingly, not cats...not a single stray cat roams the area.  We never even see cats sitting in windows as we walk - whereas we see a plethora of little dogs sitting in the traditional cat's perch in people's bay windows or glass doors, soaking in sunlight.  Makes me wonder if there's something out there more nefarious than a smelly ground hog or two, and I'm glad Tum Tum stays strictly indoors and has no interest in sunning herself in the window.  But, I digress.

Anyway, I spend a lot of time touting that my dogs are shepherds by nature.  And they are.  They're naturally loving, gentle dogs.  But, as that dog food commercial is fond of reminding us, dogs all evolved from wolves and have a hunter's spirit in there somewhere.  So, here I am, creating a little haven for all the pretty little song birds.  I have two feeders - one out front and one out back - plus a bird bath, bird house and a suet cake holder.  Of course, that draws more than just birds.  I came out one morning right after we moved here to find a wild turkey straining, successfully, to get into the bird feeder.  And of course, mice find them, as do the more cuddly looking squirrels.  Well, can I really blame the dogs for chasing after all these critters if they get the chance?

We fenced the yard as soon as we could.  For one thing, it's one of the top tick prevention steps mentioned consistently.  Don't want your dogs - or toddlers - impacted by deer ticks?  Then keep the deer out.  And of course that also dissuaded the turkeys and, I was hoping, the bunnies.  Sort of...it did.  I don't have a herd of bunnies in the yard, but the occasional one slips through from the neighbor's yard, where there are no fences and no dogs, and plenty of shade.  Sadly, last summer, one didn't make it back out.   I'm pretty sure that was Geddy's doing.  But I didn't see it (or of course would have stopped it), so that's a guess.  Nothing about his behavior has changed - he's not suddenly "blooded" and therefore predatory.

And I've found a few birds out in the yard who met an untimely end, along with the occasional mouse.  Never a squirrel, but it might be a matter of time, because there are a pair that seem to love to taunt Sirius and scurry above his head along the back fence line.  One day one of those cocky critters will mis-time their leap and there will be Sirius waiting for his revenge for all that teasing.

I hate myself and the dogs every time I find a little critter in the yard.  But they're not the only hunters - hawks occasionally lose their kill.  I was logged into a meeting last summer when I saw something that looked like a rodent literally drop like a bomb out of the sky in front of my window causing me to gasp audibly mid-sentence, so it's doubtful that most of what we see had anything to do with the dogs.  Sirius cornered a mouse one day a while ago and figured he'd found a plaything - he didn't kill it, just terrified the crap out of it.  But can I really blame them for being hunters?  Particularly if it's trespassing in what they believe is "their" space? 

Apparently the "cure" for a dog once it's killed a rabbit is to tie the rabbit around it's neck for a few days.  Oh hell no, that's not happening.  For one thing, these are companion animals who sleep with me.  Second of all, even if they weren't, just gross.  Geddy sees bunnies every evening on his walk and, while he finds them interesting, doesn't start salivating at the mouth.  I'm really not worried that he suddenly became the dog version of Venom.

Of course, there's the concerns of the various diseases that wild animals carry.  My vet offered a vaccine against "wild animals" for the dogs - not even really sure what all it protected them against, but I leapt at it, given the wild kingdom we live with.

I read a quote from Dr. Mark Russak, past President of the American Animal Hospital Association that I think summed up how I finally decided to reconcile all these competing worries, "Talk to your veterinarian about appropriate precautions, and learn to enjoy the wildlife."  Because I think this is the modern world we live in - wildlife doesn't really have the wild to go to any more, so we're going to be co-existing for a long time to come.