To the Editor:
A front page article in the Oct. 6th edition of Lumberton, N.C.’s Robesonian was titled, “7 dogs that killed woman euthanized.” According to the article, Betty Jo Hunt, the victim and an animal lover, was killed by dogs she had rescued. Until faced with a dog or dog pack attack personally, can anyone fathom the ferosity? I cannot, and spending most of my life raising livestock, I have survived three dog attacks, and my father and two of my children survived a dog pack attack, but only because I was armed.
Still, I can somewhat imagine the horror because I have witnessed the results of dog attacks on our livestock that we were not able to prevent; I will spare you the graphic details.
Space will not allow me to share the records I started keeping in 1996, when my father and my two youngest children were attacked by a savage pack of vicious dogs. May I encourage the internet literate to read your Feb. 25, 2011 article, “Deadly Attack By Dogs Is One Of Three In Recent Years,” in The Dillon Herald, and any of the numerous accounts of the attack on Rodney McAllister in St. Louis Mo., who was not just killed, but partially consumed by a dog pack.
I am an animal lover raised by animal lovers, but I have killed a number of savage dogs during vicious attacks. When the wild dog packs roaming our rural community smelled the scent of birth, I defended my father’s livestock just as young King David did in Biblical days of old. Whoever coined the term “dumb animals” had to be the dumbests person in human history! Just as it is difficult to phathom their ferocity, you have to witness dogs’ clever ability to conquer their prey to believe it.
In our community, the wild dog packs even devised ways to break into the Perdue chicken houses, killing all they wanted to eat, and obviously, many more just for the fun of it.
I have the greatest respect for those who work so dilligently to preserve the lives of unwanted animals, but what is gained by not euthanizing the unadobtable animals no one wants? Please consider the irony; if guilty human criminals are incarcereted in cells for punishment, how can animals innocent of any wrong doing enjoy 24/7 in cages or pens waiting for adoptions that never come?
Irresponsible pet owners, who fail to spay and neuter, have filled our communities with strays. No matter how harmless they may be individually, when dogs enter packs, they follow the pack leader no matter how vicious. How do I know? Before he joind the pack, numerous times I had petted one of our neighbor’s dogs that I shot off of my father and children! For our children’s and our own safety, as well as that of our pets and farmer’s livestock, isn’t it time to rid our communities of stray dogs, especially those that run in packs, and revert to the primitative state as a result?
Euthanasia is painless; isn’t it a far cry better than being continually caged or penned, and seldom if ever petted and loved?
Think about it, please!
Robert C. Currie Jr.
Laurinburg, N.C.
