If you don't want your dogs shot keep them on a leash

I'm getting tired of people blaming others for their own mistakes. This family has been all over the news crying their eyes out because their loose dogs got shot while they were on a farmer's property. If you want your dogs to be safe, keep them on a leash or in an enclosure. The farmer is legally entitled to protect his livelihood from people's marauding dogs. I see this BS all the time in my neighbourhood with people out with their dogs talking on the phone with their backs turned while the dog shits all over and gets hit by a car. I know that sooner or later this family will probably google blog posts on the subject and come on here with some emotional rant about how Labs are gentle dogs, and their little angels weren't doing anything. But the fact of the matter is that if a dog chases, even playfully, a pregnant cow, then the cow could suffer a miscarriage. Also in the article they mentioned the possibility that their children might also be in the farmer's field with their loose dogs while the farmer was shooting, and what then? Well, the farmer would probably not be criminally liable then too, since the was unlikely any intent to kill humans and no expectation that humans would be trespassing on their property. Farmer's fields are private property not parkland, if you have 5 hectares of your own, why don't you use that instead of going on other people's land?


Family awaiting answers in dogs' shooting deaths

Oct 23, 2007 04:30 AM
Carola Vyhnak
Staff reporter

Devastated by the shooting deaths of their two golden retrievers, an Uxbridge family is still waiting for answers four days after the tragedy.

"The frustrating part is we've been given no information," Helen Jenkins said yesterday. "I just don't believe our dogs were attacking anyone's livestock. I can't understand someone pulling the trigger."

The family pets got away from 13-year-old twins John and Allison while they were visiting neighbours across the road from their country home last Thursday. Fruitless searches and inquiries ensued.

Uxbridge-Scugog Animal Control called Saturday morning to say a farmer had shot the dogs in his field Friday afternoon and the family could pick up their bodies at the Reach St. shelter the next day. They were promised an incident report but were later given the runaround by animal control and the municipal clerk's office, Jenkins said.

According to her, a law dating back to the 1920s gives farmers the right to protect their livestock. In many GTA communities the rural and urban boundaries are blurring as growth pushes out. But Jenkins said that if Sonny, 1 1/2, and Casey, 4, were attacking anyone's animals, "that would set a precedent for golden retrievers."

"We're concerned about the violence of it. He or she has taken that law right to the letter. What if one of my kids popped out of a ditch somewhere? Would they get shot?"

Both dogs were wearing collars with names and phone numbers and could easily have been traced to the family, Jenkins said. The family buried their pets' "shot-up" bodies on their 5-hectare property near Claremont, north of Pickering.

Jenkins's husband, John Sr., received no satisfaction when he sought out Uxbridge Mayor Bob Shepherd for answers yesterday, she said.

While there is a report "somewhere," Shepherd told the Star, he hasn't seen it and he can't say much until he knows the facts of the case.

"I sympathize with the owners. I'm a dog owner myself. I find it difficult to believe golden retrievers could have been that threatening but maybe there's a history there that I know nothing about."

Unless there's some legal reason to withhold the report, he'll try to get it for them, he said.