Saturday, June 28, 2008

74-Year-Old Florida Woman Mauled to Death by Her Two Dogs

I have posted about this topic before. Sometimes dogs will attack a weak member of the pack. I have seen this watching groups of dogs, when a psychologically weak dog enters the group. Sometimes, you can almost imagine a "Kick Me" sign is on the back of these dogs, because it is so predictable what is going to happen if you let them loose in an off leash area. If this woman had a stroke, or some other debilitating medical problem, it could have triggered this attack.

Since this is normal pack behavior, should the dogs have been put down? Tough question. The common sense answer would be to separate the dogs, evaluate them to see if they are normal dogs, and if they are normal, adopt them out to a new home. The emotional answer is to just kill the dogs. The legal answer is to kill the dogs to eliminate the liability. The moral answer? That's up to you to decide since humans have rightful dominion over the animals of this world, and we have to be good stewards of one another and of the animals.

It's kind of like the situation when a shark attacks a swimmer in the ocean. Or a bear or cougar attacks a person in the wild. Humans tend to go and hunt the animal down and kill it. Is this really right? I'd say no. The animal isn't abnormal. The people should be leaving it alone, unless the animal is a menace, can't be captured, and would be likely to kill or attack again. But, if you are in their domain, not in a human domain (a city, for example), then I just don't think it is right to kill the animal since that is where they live.

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