Animal Cruelty to let your dog kill a raccoon?

hmm interesting. I think its a little over board with charging the guy with animal cruelty.
Maybe its the way I grew up with ratting terriers and a Bouvier killing machine and having the terriers trained to kill varmin but a pest is a pest is still a pest. And I see a raccoon as a pest.

There are no raccoons where I live, but if there were, they would be seen as a pest.

Dogs know how to kill quickly and efficantly and I see nothing wrong with what the dog did. And like Grace said I bet the dog was not even trained to get the racoon on command he might of just enticed the dog with exciting words. If a dog with prey drive sees an animal like a racoon its going to go after it no matter if you tell it to or not.

Not always...
Especially when it comes to ducks.

Ugh.

It sounds like the raccoon caused property damage, so the killing itself wasn't illegal. Just that they have a problem with the way it was done.

Some states, not Michigan apparently, don't have a hunting season on "varmints". WA state is one of those. You have to get a varmint license to hunt them, but you don't need one if they are killing livestock, causing property damage, etc. You can also use dogs for varmint control (this includes coyotes). Ever since they banned body gripping traps our raccoon population has exploded out of control. There are about 40 roaming the neighborhood at any given time, partly because our bleeding heart neighbor spends $20 a day buying cat food for "the poor dears". When I called Fish and Game they begged us not to relocate any live trapped, but instead to call the police and have an officer come out and kill it because the likelihood of rabies is sooo high right now.

ETA: And this>> The bozos do a neck grab, then *shakeshakeshake* Then end. No punctures or anything.

I've gotta go to work so I can't read everything but where I come from that's dog training

The ratting terriers was fab. Same shakeshakeshake. Broke the neck right away. No mess....well until after when they decided to eat the kill. And Maddie was born to hunt vermin. It was her life and her joy. We would always find her asleep by a gopher whole with a mouth full of dirt from trying to get the gopher.

Now Teagan likes to play with her kill (mice) while its alive. She will catch it, let it go, catch it again, throw it around, catch it again. The she tears it apart then eats it. She evil and mean.

But I am sure if there were gophers around my place now Teagan would not play with it, but kill it right away. It would be too big to play with.

Your dog just going out into the yard and killing a raccoon? Its a dog, it happens.

BUT I think people should do what they can to try and make sure their dogs DO NOT kill wild animals.
if it happens, and its not on purpose (Rabbit wanders into the yard, etc..).. then I can understand and I don't think its a criminal offense. Its just animals being animals

but to lure an animal onto your property or to make it impossible for that animal to get OFF your property, aka: giving YOUR animal an unfair advantage against a wild animal, I think thats wrong and not fair at all.
That's not animals being animals.. that is you manipulating a situation and just letting your dog kill an animal for.. fun? I guess.

If my dog ever attacked an animal, ANY OTHER animal, I would do EVERYTHING I COULD to stop it. to make sure that animal left unharmed, regardless of the animal in question.

My dog is much smaller than a raccoon, so yea.. I guess it does bring a level of concern when people think its OK for their dogs to kill animals as long as they are small.

You wouldn't believe the kind of damage raccoons have done to my grandparent's house. They're adorable, but they ate their dog's food, threatened their dog, pushed their blind Lhasa Apso in the pool, ripped apart the rafters on the porch, pulled down bird feeders, got in the garage and wrecked the interior of their cars, and lots more.

Raccoons can be a threat to dogs. They're not so vulnerable like a little bunny. I've known dogs who've been gutted by those claws.

The Rotties did that with rabbits, but with coons they're a lot feistier, so as soon as they got a good grip, chomp/shake, done.

Fran, I actually like raccoons. They are cute and smart as hell and I frankly admire the little critters.

That said, having lived on a farm until I went to college, they are VERMIN. They get into things. They destroy things. They steal things. They carry rabies and distemper (the main reason I would NOT sick my dog on one on purpose, though if one was destroying things and my dog was on it and I didn't have a gun handy, I probably wouldn't intervene if I thought the dog was sure to have the better of it). They have been known to kill cats and small dogs.

If you have a coon hanging around on a farm, and its getting into things, it has to go. Trap, poison, gun, dog killing it, it doesn't matter, that critter has to GO, and in many cases that means to its Maker and not to the park down the road. And unfair advantage . . . Fran, have you ever seen a pissed off raccoon? :yikes:

I'm not Fran (obviously, lol) but I have. Hard to believe it's the same chirpy little critter that was just eating out of its cute little paws. It's scary!

:hail::hail:

I like them as well, they are charming and cute….. And I have saved babies, and released them…

BUT….. Here on the farm…. They are soooo destructive….. And slip several notches on my cute scale every time they cost us money from destroying property, crops etc… They are a nasty little pest when they want to be, and it's not like they have no habitat left here, we are on a 400 acre farm surrounded by farms as big or bigger…. Our crops are easy food for them, and our buildings nice cozy shelter…. The brats even test the corn, you will see the husks where they have "checked" them and the day, I swear, the DAY that corn is ready, they destroy a lot of it.. and they don't pull off a cob and eat the whole thing… Noooo…. they pull off 20 and take a bite or two from each one!!!

Part of the job of a good all around farm dog is vermin control. And that does involve killing. And yeah, I'd prefer my dog to not kill a raccoon, that's because of concerns over my dog's health and safety, not concern over the raccoon. I also don't want my dog killing random wildlife - if the animals are hanging around getting on with their lives and not being nuisances, they're welcome.

I live on 16 acres now, and the only wild animals that ever become a nuisance on the property are the geese, which I do encourage my dogs to chase, only when the geese are in my immediate yard. Once the geese get into the pond or on the far side of the pond, my dogs are called off. Other critters pretty much steer clear. I do see them sometimes darting into the woods, and I make sure to keep my dogs from chasing them in that case.

But when a skink crawled under my bathroom door, I absolutely locked a dog in the bathroom, with hopes that the dog would get rid of it. And I didn't care if that was done by chasing it back outside or by killing.

As for the OP though, if they were encouraging the dog to kill, and since that's illegal where they are, and because a neighbor did call the police and there is video of it, I am happy to see the laws being enforced. Whether or not I agree with the law is a separate issue, and whether or not they really were doing something that broke the law isn't clear.

I thought they were cute, until one got hold of one of my favorite gamecocks. I ran outside because we heard him screaming and chased the coon away. The blasted devil creature had ripped his wings out of their sockets and skinned him alive from breast to tail. I had to put him down right there. Do you know how heartbreaking it is to find a beloved pet maimed like that? Not only maimed, but maimed alive? Can you imagine now much that hurt?

And it wasn't them doing it for food. They'd maim birds and leave them dying with torn off limbs and skinned alive, never taking a single bite of food of them. If birds roosted too close to the wire they'd reach through and pull of their limbs for fun, right through the wire. I could forgive a killing for food. But this was gross sport. Lost all respect for raccoons after that. Any coon that sets foot on my property is a dead coon for all I care.

Out in the woods, that's where they belong and that's fine with me. I'll leave them alone.

If they knew it was illegal. Yes, they did pest control, but they may not have realized that siccing your dog on an animal that it was legal to kill when it was on your property, and vermin, was against the law. It would never cross my mind that I couldn't sic my dog on a raccoon that was damaging my property. I wouldn't do so, as a generally rule, for the safety of the dog, but that it was against the law just wouldn't occur to me.

Oh I didn't mean it was wrong for people to use dogs as vermin control or anything like that, its totally ok to not want them on your property (they steal, carry disease etc..)

I was referring to people who LURE the animals onto their property, and then send their dogs on them on purpose. or in cases where the wild animal has NO way to escape or get off your property.. IMO thats just unfair.

We have squirrels that come to the dog park trying to steal treats ALL THE TIME, and yea, once in a while.. a dog gets one and kills a squirrel.
I don't feel bad lol **** HAPPENS, its a dog park and the squirrel took its chance and knew there were dogs around.

but I wouldn't agree with us putting nuts on the ground or other methods for TRYING to get dogs to kill squirrels.

if that makes sense.

Not realizing it doesn't make it not illegal.

Yes, the lawyer knows that. But its a good sign that there is something wrong with the law (or with the application of it) when it simply wouldn't occur to a relatively sane and normal person that something was illegal.

And yes, Fran, THAT is wrong, and is illegal in most cases, and should be.

Yah that is just sick and twisted. I dont have any respect for people like that.

Absurd.

It's OK to kill vermin that are destructive to property.

It's OK to use a dog to kill vermin.

Hunting laws apply when hunting game. This guy wasn't hunting it or killing it as game he was killing it under the exemption that you can kill destructive animals. Totally different ball of wax.

I agree with Lil that is sounds like animal rights city people who have no idea what they're talking about came out with this.

That's not animal cruelty, that's nature made complicated by the agenda of humans.

I'm still not convinced they broke any laws. From the article:

It wasn't even like the dog chased it down and mauled it. It was inside their building actively causing damage when the dog grabbed it. It doesn't say if the guy even knew a raccoon was in there to begin with, he might have even thought a person could have done it.

If my dog gets hold of a raccoon or other large carnivorous animal, I'm going to encourage them to end things as rapidly as possible. My aunt's dog made the mistake of changing her mind after a grabbing a coon. The result was not pretty for the dog. And I'd never risk getting in the middle of that. The last thing anyone needs is dog/wild animal bites and rabies shots. Ugh.