Three Dogs Euthanized after Mauling Neighbors, Dogs in Denver

This just sickens me. I only found out about this because I was reading an article on our local news site about how a cougar, which also doesn't deserve it, would be getting euthanized for attacking livestock, and I didn't know what euthanized meant.

Right, so people would rather take the lazy way out by killing the animals rather than training them not to be aggressive. I don't care what an animal does, killing them is just the coward's way out. The only justifiable cause to putting an animal down is if it's sick and suffering, but other than that, their lives should not be taken.

Three Dogs Euthanized after Mauling Neighbors, Dogs in Denver

• Source: The Denver Channel
• Published: May 14, 2014

 

Taking the aggressive nature out of a dog isn't easy and rarely successful. It's only their natural reaction to things. Generally in these cases it's the owner's fault for not restraining the animal that has committed the crime, rather than the beast's. Of course, some fault is to the animal as the owner generally doesn't yell "KILL THEM" or anything, but if more care was taken of animals this would be avoided. My sympathies to the neighbours.

 

Just to clarify, I have complete sympathy for the people attacked, but I'm just against the death sentence, regardless of whether it's on humans or animals, but more so toward animals.

 

Looking at a related story, this wasn't the first time the attacking dogs had been impounded. So they or their owners had been caught up in some kind of incident(s) before. Sad as it might be, euthanasia sometimes ends up being the humane route. It would be hard (if not impossible) to retrain adult dogs to ensure they weren't at risk of future incidents. That and the way adoptions go, if the owners were to have just given up their pets, it'd be very difficult to place animals that have had a past of attacking humans and other animals.

 

Sadly, most states say that dogs who bite someone and end up being caught by the police have to be euthanized.

Most shelters won't even THINK of accepting aggressive dogs who are protective of their foods, even the Houston SPCA refuses to keep dogs that show any aggression towards food, much less bite someone. Most dogs, sadly, when they taste human blood, they're fixated on it. It takes years if it's possible to train a dog to get over the fixation. It's sad the dogs were euthanized, but as I pointed out in a video where an attack dog was euthanized:

It's better to have a dog put to sleep than a 2 year old kid playing in the driveway being attacked by said dog. (I saw a video yesterday where a little boy was riding his bike in his own driveway and was attacked by a neighbors dog, requiring ten stitches. The only thing that saved him was his family's cat.)

 

People's safety matter more than an animals life, in my opinion anyways. It's sad to see animals die, but at the same time most people only say that because "dogs are cute". We kill bugs all the time, and they are animals too. Which is why I tend to stay neutral on the subject, but in this case I understand and agree with what happened.