I sometimes commute to work along a four-lane road that used to be an intrastate highway. Because this is Silicon Valley, it is still a heavily traveled road at rush hour, but it is not a proper freeway – it’s pretty open on all sides to pedestrians, and God help them, animals.
At least once every week or two, you will see a dead dog by the side of this road. This morning, it was a beautiful golden retriever, thrown crumpled and broken against the center divider. He was wearing a collar, so I know he was someone’s pet. Last week, some people were crowded around a big lab by the side of the road who must have still been alive, and they were on cell phones, presumably trying to call some kind of pet emergency service.
I can understand an occasional tragedy involving an determined digger or an escape artist, but come on! The number of dogs killed on this particular road is mind-bending. What are people NOT doing that this many dogs are running loose in traffic? I would NEVER get a dog that I could not keep securely in my yard or house. Your dog isn’t smart enough to survive in this world alone; it depends on you to keep it safe, the way children do. If you can’t keep your animals secure, you shouldn’t have animals!
pugluvr, I agree with you that folks should keep better control of their animals. But sometimes they get out no matter what. And, sometimes, I think they are let out deliberately, by someone who doesn’t like them. My family currently has two cats(my sister has one, my parents the other) that HAD to have been somebody’s loved pet. They had every evidence of health and vet care, but both were found far from residences, in busy commercial areas.
I’m glad though that someone like you has spoken up.
And it can definitely happen accidentally. When we come home from work, we let the dog out to do her business and such. Normally she’s out for fifteen or twenty minutes, and then we let her back in the house.
Lately, someone has been opening backyard gates in the neighborhood. No one knows who, but it has happened to our next-door neighboor, us, and one house across the street. Probably more. But in the twenty minutes we think our dog is out happily frolicking in her safe backyard, she could be running down the street and getting hit by a car. But it definitely wouldn’t be because we didn’t care enough to have her be safe.
Our next-door neighboor just put a padlock on their gate. We’re going to have to do the same this weekend.
Necros: Good for you for getting a lock for your gate. We have always had one on our backyard gate, precisely for this reason.
Esprix: I read your thread about your grandmother’s cat, and it made me sick. Sorry they beat you to it. Some people can be very cruel to animals, and not with any active intent of doing them harm. These are the types that almost make me more crazy than the real sickos, because they feel that they are being reasonable. Gah!
I drive to work on an interstate like that. We call it the “Highway of Death” because of the number of animals along the side of the road. Dogs, cats, chicken, coyotes. The worst was the day that traffic was going about 30 mph and I was wondering why. Then I saw the chow-type dog lying in the left lane, hit and badly bleeding, but still alive. I pulled over and tried to get to the other side to at least pull him off to the side (he was going to die soon) but I couldn’t get across because no one would stop to let me across the three lanes of interstate. I cried all the way to work because I was so close to him but couldn’t get there. Thank goodness he was gone by the time I headed back for him after rush hour. I have had the problem of my dogs getting out before, and I worried to death for days before he was found. Unfortunately many dogs roam free around here and I am sure that it is only a matter of time before I see them on the way to work. It makes me so sad. I am a big baby when it comes to animals.
I’ve been haunted the last 3 weeks by an incident that occurred last time my husband and I went grocery shopping. We were headed down a relatively quiet country highway when we spotted a kitten in the on-coming lane. It was just sitting there as pretty and innocent as you can imagine, just a tiny thing, probably not even 6 weeks old.
There were no cars in the on-coming lane, so we thought we would have a chance to turn around and get it. But it took us too long to find a wide spot in the road. By the time we got turned around, we saw cars had been following us. When we got back to the kitten, it was squished.
Now if my set-up sounds confusing, allow me to clarify: There were no cars in the on-coming lane. These cars had been behind us before we got turned around. But the kitten’s body was still in the exact same spot. Meaning one of the bastards behind us swerved into the oncoming lane to hit this kitten!! It sickens me that someone would go out of his way to kill an animal on the road.
I had hoped to rescue the kitten and take it home. I keep thinking it must have been either a stray or a barn cat; probably no one misses it. But I can’t forget it.
I almost hit a cat the other day on my street. I locked up the brakes and was totally freaking out. Didn’t hit the poor thing (thank goodness) I am a huge animal lover.
I am totally pissed about the people hitting the kitten. How dare they just squish a kitten that wasn’t even in their lane! If I ever come acroos one of those people, I will run them over to see if they like it. Drivers can slow down, honk, flash the headlights, do whatever to get an animal out of the road.
Necros-please get a lock for your gate. Some asshole might let the dog out or even steal it.
My best friend when I was a kid lost her beagle this way. They lived by a busy highway and the dog was allowed to be loose in the yard (actually about four acres). The dog was very well trained and never went into the road.
My friend found her dog dead beside the road one day. The swerving tire tracks in the dirt of the road shoulder told her all she needed to know…
I wonder about people who deliberately kill animals this way. They obviously have a very low value of life in general, and I wonder how long it would take for them to graduate from killing people’s pets to clipping someone on a bike, just for laughs…
When I moved to the country from NYC, I was surprised by the amount of death that I saw all around me. Every spring, Baby birds fall from the trees like leaves do in fall, to splat on the ground. Various wildlife is constantly killing each other and leaving evidence everywhere.
What bothers me though is human neglect.
People get sick of their dogs and turn them loose in the State Game lands not two miles from my house.
They become feral diseased, and travel in packs. They are particularly dangerous in summer after they’ve had pups, and in winter when food is short.
One is foolih to walk around in the fields or woods around here unarmed because of them.
At first I was shocked by this, but now if I see a stray dog without a collar, I shoot it, and view doing so as an act of common sense and compassion, as these dogs become very dangerous to humans and livestock while they suffer.
Several of our local Amish (including my next door neighbor) have puppy mills on their property. These are simply kennels raised above the ground. The dogs breed indiscriminately, and puppies are removed when they reach 8 weeks or so. The feces falls out the bottom of the cages, they have automatic waterers and feed bins but receive almost no human contact except when the owners remove puppies, or an animal has been dead long enough that the smell becomes noticeable. These dead dogs are piled in a culvert adjoining my land. They are Shi-Tzus.
As far as I know, they’re not doing anything illegal. They clean up the feces, the dogs are fed, they receive their shots, and throwing dead livestock into a ditch is pretty much the way it’s done around here.
The guy that raises the dogs is about nineteen years old, and pretty proud of his operation. They just moved there last spring, and I got the grand tour when I went over to introduce myself.
When I was a kid we had a fenced-in yard for our dog, but he would still manage to get out for one of two reasons: 1)He would “nose” the gate-latch open and get out or 2) the neighbor’s three-year-old would let him out. We had to get padlocks for the fence, and I would suggest to necros to get locks ASAP. It isn’t necessarily neglect or malice that would cause a gate to be opened, but it’s unlikely to happen with a locked gate.
