American citizen. [volume] (Canton, Miss.) 1864-1890, 1875-08-28
The Dog Question.

With the summer season and sheep
shearing time has returned to the bar OF
rural public opinion the great case, often
heard and never decided, of Sheep us.
Dog. 1t is both civil and criminal
case, for it involves literally hundreds of
thousands of lives and millions of dollars
annually. The question is one whose i'm
portance cannot be belittled, one in which
every class of the community is interested
To the nation at large, even from an eco
nomic point of view, it is serious mat.
ter-this matter of our five or seven mill
ions of superiuous dogs, of which 80 per
cent are worse than worthless. During
the French revolution, when the people
were sorely pinched with scarcity OF food,
the great Dog Question came into prOmi-
hence and one of the suggestions of that
mad time-and by no means the maddest
of them-was that to save the Republic
"every citizen should hang his dog" The
estimate OF the statistician that it costs as
much to keep dog as it would to keep a
hog will hardly, upon reflection, be re-
jected as excessive. The dog consumes
flesh principally, and unlike his house
companion of smaller size and appetite
sustenance. This is a pretty heavy drain
on the pockets of the community and
should really be increased by adding the
profits lost but which would accrue from
a wiser investment of the amount thus
placed to the debit of the Profit and
Loss account. But again, there must be
reckoned in addition the heavy loss from
sheep, poultry and even cattle destroyed,
not to mention the smaller items of gar
dens spoiled, people bitten and lawsuits
promoted. A yellow dog, of the sort
worth about penny for three, will give
rise to more heartburnings and litigations
between neighbOrs tn IN even a boundary
fence. There is no necessity to go into
the figures that are yearly paraded to
show that in sheep-raising country from
8 to II per cent. of the total value of the
stock is regularly destroyed by these ours.
Precisely why the farmers keep so many
dogs, and such dogs, it is not easy to
imagine. 1t is of course desirable that in
the country a farmhouse should have
its police force in the shape of good
Watchdog, who shall give warning at
night of the approach of burglars or
chicken-thisves, and by day serve as a
body-guard to the women-fOlk, usually
left alone in the house and exposed to
insult or violence from tramps. But this
sort of dog doesn't kill sheep In the first
place, and in the second place hasn't;
under proper regulation, a chance to kill
sheep. 1t is the other three to six dogs
that infest SO many farms of which people
have right to complain. These are
usually mOngrels, without pluck or sense,
too Stupid to be trained and too cowardly
to act as watch-dogs; ours with strongly
articulated tails and prominent ribs, and
ears like leather-aprons, animals which
apparently were only created to dig up
garden-see0 shelter fleas and howl at
nights. All farmers, too, are prejudiced
against all dogs but their own. Thus, in
an exchange farmer complained last
week that from his door he could see sew
en- farm houses at which there were thirty
dogs; he added in perfect innocence and
Inconsistencies that he had four himself
But ones own dogs never run sheep. AS
sreuaedy a welf-enferced dog law, placing
a tax on every dog and compelling the
town or county to pay for all sheep killed,
with due penalties for failure to comply
with the Law, of course does away in a
great measure with the evil. But such
laws are not popular and are lot easily
enforced. The only effectual remedy will
be found to lie in the common sense of the
farmers awakened by discussion and expe-
rieRce. When man. reflects that he is
keeping q .menagerie of useless carnivo-
rous animals that cost him as much annu-
ally as q pen of fat hogs would, but yield
nothing that they are increasing his taxes
and destroying the property of his neigh
bors, whose dogs in turn. are destroying
his, he will not be long in coming to "
sound conclusion as to what his selfinter-
est and his duty to his neighbor impera-
lively demand that he should do.-N. r.
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