POISONING OF DOGS

Press, Volume LXIX, Issue 20977, 4 October 1933, Page 15

POISONING OF DOGS

TO THE EDITOB Off THIS EEES3. Sir,—ln reply to "Friend of Dogs'* and "Justice," I would like to say that I personally have never poisoned a dog, or anything else, on account of the painful death, but I do not blame anyone who does, as he no doubt has good reason. No one would do it without. In my home recently there has been sickness of a most painful nature. When intervals of relief came, the sufferer could not get much-needed sleep on account of the yelping curs referred to in my first letter. Must she suffer for someone's untrained dog, or could one be blamed for silencing it? I quite agree that it is the owner that is to blame, but talking to owners is most often like talking to the air, as I have found by experience. A drover with a whole pack of dogs came almost next door, and those dogs kept it up night and day. The owner was spoken to, with no results. The proper authorities were spoken to, with a few quiet nights as a result. The owner's health failed and he at last got rid of his dogs, but only after months of annoyance for the neighbours. A friend of mine has been much annoyed by a barking dog in another part of the town. The owner has been approached several times, but only laughs. As my friend was boarding he solved the problem by shifting, but one cannot do that when one owns a house. Reasonable owners do not allow their dogs to be a nuisance. As for keeping gates shut, ours is always shut as it is fitted with an automatic closing device. Dogs do not need an open gate through which to enter, they just jump over. I know full well the devotion of a dog. I have owned and loved one. I also know what it is to see a lovely cat, that was as much to us as any owner's dog could be to him, suffer terrible pain as a result of being worried on our own property by a roving dog. That a harmless dog should get poison that was probably not laid for him is most regrettable, but, after all, if a dog is under control there is little risk, as the owner knows where his dog is all the time. I saw a man pass my home with his dog following. The dog came into my garden and sniffed round. When shouted at it jumped out, crossed the street and went into a garden there. After a sniff round, it ran down the street and overtook its owner, who was probably quite unconscious that the dog had been off the street. If there had been poison in either garden the dog would have got it, and I cannot see that the householder would have been to blame. One does get tired of intruding dogs.— Yours, etc., CONTROL. Ashburton, October 3, 1933.