Either there’s a huge lack of common sense at many places here or this story is leaving some details out.
There's a big fluffy white dog in my neighbhorhood who has a talent for jumping the fence. I've returned him 3 times. This is not hard... once you determine he's friendly and just on an adventure the phone number is on his tag.
He's a good boy.
"Sounds like you're just feeding them to the coyotes."
Wording could be taken either way, and I could be wrong, but it almost sounds like the dog was not on the property of its owner, and was over the fence in the neighbours property?
We have a huge problem with pet cats that stray from their properties and eat birds/fish/etc in neighbouring properties... if one turns up on my property, I trap it and send it to the shelter specifically so the owner gets fined, even though I know who owns it. It's what our local council/government recommend we do considering the owners already know it's illegal for pet cats to be off their property here (or even outside of their house after dark, which is almost always when we trap them in our yard).
So, is it deliberate that this is indistinguishable from making outside cats illegal? Otherwise how the heck are owners supposed to ensure cats stay on their property?
Sounds like that's their problem to figure out, and I think that's right. I would 1000 times rather have more birds at my feeders than the neighbor's cat pooping in my yard, hunting birds and bothering my dog.
Let them put in a good fence, electric collar, leash with one of those zip line things - whatever they have to do.
At bird feeders the percentage of individual visitors that are non-native is often much higher. The non-natives tend to be more generalist eaters, whereas the native specifies tend to stick more to their native diet which isn't as well served by most feeders.
By drawing in these generalist non-natives feeders tend to actually displace native birds from the surrounding area.
That's why when I was feeding birds I didn't really worry about cats getting into my yard. I couldn't think of a way to make a good argument that the line of how much harm it is OK to do to the native environment for your enjoyment is somewhere between the harm feeding non-native birds does and the harm the neighborhood cats do (especially since I've never seen a cat catch a bird in my yard).
you know how crazy you sound?
read the exchange in which i told someone they sounded crazy. understand it in context, and try to be less eager to blurt out your first reaction. god damn.
If you care about the environment you should not let your cat wander. If you don't care about that, you should not be surprised when others do.
I have an electric fence; cats sense it and avoid it. 20+ years without a cat getting off the property.
If you'd like that pleasure, you're welcome to it. You just don't get to inflict your particular masochist tendencies on your neighbors.
The irony of "control your animals" while referring to wild birds as "yours" is ... interesting.
> In Faith's case, Wissner said, the neighbor apparently didn't realize the fence line and property line weren't the same
It’s weird because it’s like a series of well meaning people that dropped the ball on what was the most obvious action to take.
The concept of being on ranch property gets a bit nebulous in Wyoming when you realize much private land is checkerboarded with blm land and the ranchers have long term blm grazing leases. The dog being outside the rancher's private property doesn't mean it's not out doing its job.
I don’t know the full story here, but have you tried talking to your neighbor? Like, really tried in a way that takes their perspective seriously? Because what you’ve described here is essentially guaranteed to make the relationship worse and likely to cause other problems down the road. Heaven forbid you ever truly need this person’s help, you’re going to be in a tough spot.
But they're patrollers - they establish where they're meant to protect, and they stay in that area - they don't want to be lured away, because that means their home area is unprotected.
Some coyote hunt like that - they'll send a lone dog out to try to lure dogs to come investigate or play and when the animal does, the pack will get it. We went camping with friends and brought our GP, and when you could hear that, very near by, she was energized and on high alert, but she was locked in on standing right by us, between us and the howling.
I've always had, and loved, large dogs - an Airedale/Wolfhound, then a Newfoundland, and now a Great Pyrenees. I love all of them but the GP basically feels like my dog now.
Maybe because the incidence of actual neglect and abuse is non-zero; and if you have an affinity for them, it’s hard to turn a blind eye. But I suppose it results in some situations that aren’t perceived accurately.