Ok, here’s the back story. We live on the corner of a main road and a cul-de-sac which has a school at the bottom of the road and two other houses. There were people living in one of the houses when we moved in who had two dogs, a male and a female. They subsequently moved out and abandoned the dogs. In the 18 months following, the bitch has had 3 sets of puppies. One batch grew up and drove us insane but eventually disappeared, the next set were killed by the other house’s dog and this last set were 5 pups, 3 of which we managed to catch and send to the local humane society.
The problem is the other two pups are still digging holes under our fence and stealing my dog’s food. My dog is a wuss and won’t chase them away. On Saturday, I came home to find the pups had made a hole in my pond lining leaving 1" of water. We do not have Animal Control and the humane society does not have the resources to do anything (they want to charge me some exhorbitant amount to hire a humane trap, I would have to drive an hour to get it, then when I have caught the dogs, drive another hour to drop them at the humane society). The female will just continue having puppies and my fiance is of the opinion that enough is enough and we should just poison them. I don’t want to poison them but will if necessary. What is the best way to get rid of them?
Well, what are the possible social and legal repercussions if you do just poison them? Can you be charged with cruelty to animals or something if your neighbors find out what you did? If it’s legal to poison stray dogs, will your neighbors ostracize you or bomb your mailbox or something if they find out?
Me, if it could be done discreetly and privately (and legally), I’d have no problem with simply poisoning them.
Make SURE you keep your own dogs inside. Stories abound of people who tried to poison stray dogs whose own dogs happily chowed down on the bait.
Dogs are poisoned here every day. My last dog was poisoned by an unscrupulous farmer who let his goats roam free and when one was killed by a neighbour’s dog, he poisoned all the dogs on the road. These are stray dogs and a nuisance to everyone on the road. No-one would bat an eye if I poisoned them, but it’s not really the most humane way to remove them.
Stray animals are a real hassle here and a young girl was attacked by stray dogs the other day in town.
This is a much bigger problem than a pair of stray dogs. Are you living in a post-nuclear-holocaust wasteland?
Call the office of your local elected representative and ask him or her why no one can help you, and what he or she would suggest be done. Start nice, but vbe prepared to insist something be done. And back it up next time an election rolls around.
I don’t think poison is the answer. You may end up poisoning your own pets or non-pesty animals in the area.
I’d go on ebay and see if you can get a trap for a reasonable price. I borrowed one from a friend who had 50 kittens in a year’s time. We used it to capture our big cat. I don’t think it could possibly cost a lot. Also, check with a local vet. They may have access to traps. Good luck!
I’m in Antigua. We have the humane society, which as I said is located an hour away and has no resources, and we have a private rescue place which is severly underfunded and will only home and place strays, they do no rescue operations themselves. Believe me, I have tried those avenues. If these dogs were approachable, I would definitely catch them and take them to the shelter or the humane society. The last thing I am going to do is throw poison in the street willy-nilly!
Are you really located in Antiqua? I have been there and it was lovely. After a hurricane that hit Puerto Rico (IIRC) a local shelter in my area paid to ship dogs to their shelter. The dogs were adopted quickly due to the “novelty” of P.R. hurricane dogs being available. If you think your local Humane Society would be interested, drop me an email and i can give you contact info.
Either that, or poison/shoot/trap them. You are in an environment that has little buffer for a stray dog epidemic.
Oh, and BTW. . . I do offer a consultation service should your dogs ever require veterinary care. In exchange for my travel costs, I could help you with your pets.
I have tried to get hold of a trap, it is a lot of hassle and very expensive. None of the vets around here have any. I just want something to use once, I don’t want to buy something. I think I’m really looking for a homemade humane trap. I would be willing to drive them to the humane society once I caught them, but I don’t want to spend a ton of money on stray dogs.
Gee thanks LOL. I will call the humane society and see if they would be interested in shipping their strays. I don’t know how feasible it would be from here though as most of the strays are mangy and look like coconut retrievers. But they are the nicest natured dogs once they are socialised early.
Even if eBay did have a reasonably priced dog-sized humane trap available, I’d think that the shipping from the U.S. to Antigua would be (A) expensive, and (B) time-consuming.
If you could even ship a trap from the U.S. to Antigua in the first place. It’s not like you can just stick it in a box and put some postage on it and drop it off at Mailboxes Etc.
Please don’t poison them, no matter what. It is such a slow horrible awful death.
If it really comes to it, leave meat with massive doses of sleeping pills/sedative and either track them to where they’ve fallen asleep and take them to a shelter or shoot them while they sleep.
I hate that you don’t have better options. But poisoning an animal is cruel.
That’s not a bad idea, I don’t know where I’d get sleeping pills though…mmmm…vetbridge, what would you recommend to put them to sleep? I know human medications are not suitable for dogs (my friend accidently poisoned her dog with paracetamol after it had been attacked by other dogs, thinking it would help with the pain).
