The lead story is that someone took a dog with tags and contact info, didn’t call the owners took it to a shelter instead, then the shelter didn’t call the owner either. Finally, the owner calls the police and finds out what happened.
Either there’s a huge lack of common sense at many places here or this story is leaving some details out.
There's a big fluffy white dog in my neighbhorhood who has a talent for jumping the fence. I've returned him 3 times. This is not hard... once you determine he's friendly and just on an adventure the phone number is on his tag.
There are literally people in my apartment complex in California insisting we feed and provide water for the stray cats, squirrels, and raccoons (yes even the raccoons) because they "can't live on their own" and then are concerned when any of those turn up dead because local coyotes know where the food is.
It's possible people don't like sheep ranchers. Or maybe its just that one rancher. We have the goat herders in our area that fence off parts of the undeveloped land during the summer because it's a fire hazard. Those guardian dogs never leave the fenced area, and they will let you know when you are too close very quickly.
> a new neighbor had spotted Faith just outside a fence on Wissner’s property
Wording could be taken either way, and I could be wrong, but it almost sounds like the dog was not on the property of its owner, and was over the fence in the neighbours property?
We have a huge problem with pet cats that stray from their properties and eat birds/fish/etc in neighbouring properties... if one turns up on my property, I trap it and send it to the shelter specifically so the owner gets fined, even though I know who owns it. It's what our local council/government recommend we do considering the owners already know it's illegal for pet cats to be off their property here (or even outside of their house after dark, which is almost always when we trap them in our yard).
> it's illegal for pet cats to be off their property here
So, is it deliberate that this is indistinguishable from making outside cats illegal? Otherwise how the heck are owners supposed to ensure cats stay on their property?
> Otherwise how the heck are owners supposed to ensure cats stay on their property?
Sounds like that's their problem to figure out, and I think that's right. I would 1000 times rather have more birds at my feeders than the neighbor's cat pooping in my yard, hunting birds and bothering my dog.
Let them put in a good fence, electric collar, leash with one of those zip line things - whatever they have to do.
Reasonable. I like cats well enough, but I find that cat owners are usually very irrational about people disliking other people's cats causing issues, especially compared to dog owners. I don't really understand why.
Dogs are easier to train and control than cats. A dog being a menace outside can be put on a leash. That's not always an option for a cat, which in practice means the cat owner knowing the only option is to confine their cat indoors. Which many don't want to do. (Mine gets semi-supervised time outside. I put a GPS collar on him from time to time, however, and he doesn't go far and comes back quite quickly. He's also seventeen and so past his most urgent hunting days, though we did have an issue with him letting in an elk last winter.)
One spring a bird built a nest in a tree outside my 80 yr old grandmother's kitchen window. She watched the nest every day and then the eggs hatched. The next day a neighbor's outdoor cat climbed the tree and killed all the baby birds. My grandmother complained to the neighbors but they didn't see what the problem was. Oh well.
> Wording could be taken either way, and I could be wrong, but it almost sounds like the dog was not on the property of its owner, and was over the fence in the neighbours property?
The concept of being on ranch property gets a bit nebulous in Wyoming when you realize much private land is checkerboarded with blm land and the ranchers have long term blm grazing leases. The dog being outside the rancher's private property doesn't mean it's not out doing its job.
I have one of these dogs. They’re basically treated like livestock in some places, not pets. Also they’re extremely clever and capable of having and executing on “ideas.” People put 2 GPS collars on them for a reason. It’s not inconceivable this one got loose, was in rough shape (covered in burrs, scratches, lean) and to anyone’s eyes needed to see a professional. But who knows, as you said.
Our largest dog is extremely active. He is a great bird and rabbit dog and he runs and runs and runs when we're not hunting. He'll follow the tractor for miles back and forth in the field. He's skinny but, according to the vet, exactly where he should be in weight.
Our neighbor's mom called the animal warden on us for not feeding him. He eats better than I do.
Her dog is a morbidly obese miniature collie.
Most people's perspective of ideal animal shapes is incorrect.
Sounds like they need GPS trackers on their collars. Or if cost is a concern, a simple air tag would do since most people 'rescuing' them likely have an iphone
Taken to the other extreme, you have feral dogs. We don't think of them much in urban areas, or even most rural areas, since we will rarely encounter anything more wild than a stray. Being stalked by a pack of feral dogs is not pleasant.
We tried to adopt a cat once from a local shelter. If there was any indication that you would let the cat outside, for any period of time, they would reject the application. Also, if there was any indication you would ever leave the cat alone for 10 hours or more, they would reject the application. So, we left all those cats in the shelter, where there were almost certainly terminated, and bought a kitten from some random people on craigslist.
After that cat passed, we tried to adopt a dog from the local shelters. All required an interview and house visit, with random unscheduled visits within the 6 months after. We bought a puppy from some random kid.
edit: "any indication that you would let the cat outside" and "outdoor cat" are not the same thing. I failed because I said we had a patio we would let the cat sit on, in nice weather, on the second floor, or because we were going to see if we could leash train it (my friend had with his cat). I don't know, the lady seemed very angry the whole interview. The leash training failed before it made its way outdoors, but the sun was enjoyed.
When I was a kid we adopted two kittens from a local cat rescue. They made us sign a document saying we would never allow the cats outside. One got out when she was a few months old, and she developed an obsession with the outdoors and would spend hours each day scratching at the door and licking her fur off, and occasionally she would escape and us kids would chase her around the yard until we could get her back in. We did the exact same indoor cat enrichment activities with her and her sister, who never developed a desire to get out.
Eventually we took the one with the outdoors obsession to the vet who told us we could either put her on Prozac or start letting her out. At that point we started letting her out (in our quiet suburb nowhere near a major road), and she instantly became an extremely happy cat. Her sister lived as a happy indoor cat, while she would go out during the day and come in at night. She came back every night and they both lived to pass of kidney disease when they were 15.
I know a lot of people are extremely against cats going outside, but compared to some of my college friends who kept "emotional support" cats in minuscule dorm rooms, I would much rather let a cat out than imprison it. I don't really buy the songbird thing in built up suburbia.
You're allowed to lie on your application to the shelter. But you should also not let your cat outside because cats are bird murder machines.
A house visit to adopt a dog seems excessive. But this might be organizational scar tissue: mentally ill people adopting and hoarding animals, for example.
Depending on the jurisdiction, any adoption contract that says you have to allow unscheduled visits 6 months after may not be enforceable. Treat your adopted pet well and tell anyone who interferes to f off.
In a lot of ways typical farm cats are more natural than dogs. The distance between those cats and the undomesticated variety isn’t that wide.
Most domesticated cats demonstrably have no issues thriving while feral. They are not well-adapted to every environment they’ve been introduced but they do pretty well in many. Their main issue in places like North America is prodigious predation in the wild, which is mitigated when living near humans.
Cats are non-trivial to contain in the owner's yard, and will attack other animals. Sometimes that is the intention (e.g. barn cats), other times is unwelcome attacks on wildlife (e.g. birds). My family also had to deal with vet bills due to a cat that attacked our dog. While I wouldn't consider letting a cat outdoors abusive, it is certainly disrespectful to neighbours.
The other thing about shelters is they often deal with animals from abusive or neglectful homes. Random visits are likely excessive, but they are just trying to prevent the animal from enduring the same situation with new owners (and likely trying to ensure the new owners can handle an animal that has a history of being abused).
The shelter is doing its job: outdoor cats live a shorter life due to fights, cars, disease, predation, etc. And not only that, but they also decimate the local songbird population, which is already in great decline.
If songbirds are your concern, you'd do worlds more for them by getting your neighbors to replace their lawns with shrubbery than by fretting over a couple spoiled cats too stuffed with tinned food to catch anything.
In some parts of the US outdoor cats are an essential bulwark against rodent invasion. It is healthy for the cats and very effective organic rodent control. They do get some birds but the bulk of their activity is rodents. There are places you can’t live without them.
Depending on the situation, outdoor cats can also live a long time. We had farm cats when I was growing up that spent a large part of their time outdoors during the day. They were smart, social, and typically lived 15-20 years before old age caught up with them.
Predation mostly impacts cats that are either obviously stupid or aggressively anti-social in my experience.
While we are at it, blind guidedog users would like to remind you that you really shouldn't walk up to a working dog and stop the owner to pet the dog. They get their share of love, no worries. What you are doing right now is obstructing the owners path, stealing their time, and possibly confusing the dog to a point where you are creating a dangerous sitatuion. But, seriously, it is likely useless to tell such stories these days. Those people to selfish or stupid to do these acts will NEVER read these messages, nor will they actually understand whats going on.
I know nothing about such dogs or farms, but why would he allow the dog to go beyond the property fence, even though it was still his property? Why include that on the limits of the property that takes 1 to 2 years to teach?
Dogs are smart, curious, and capable. They also understand boundaries. If you have a large property it is surprisingly difficult to prevent a motivated dog from leaving it. Some dogs have a strong desire to go on a walkabout on occasion. Chaining a farm dog defeats their purpose, and is arguably inhumane, so for some of them it just comes with the territory.
We had one dog growing up that liked to commune with a particular herd of cattle (in a friendly way) in a distant field on occasion, and nobody and nothing could stop it when it had that inclination. Dog on a mission.
Farming properties are large, grazing paddocks are much smaller and many - some are even "virtual" - defined by GPS shock collars on stock.
Dogs are smart and learn outer boundaries and roam looking for predators, stock are kept bounded and once an area is cropped (to some degree) they are moved to another grazing area.
Either there’s a huge lack of common sense at many places here or this story is leaving some details out.
There's a big fluffy white dog in my neighbhorhood who has a talent for jumping the fence. I've returned him 3 times. This is not hard... once you determine he's friendly and just on an adventure the phone number is on his tag.
He's a good boy.
Friendly is irelevant, some "friendly" dogs are quite dangerous!
I would like the think a tagged dog in the shelter has zero risk of not being put down… But this story doesn’t give a great data point.
Wording could be taken either way, and I could be wrong, but it almost sounds like the dog was not on the property of its owner, and was over the fence in the neighbours property?
We have a huge problem with pet cats that stray from their properties and eat birds/fish/etc in neighbouring properties... if one turns up on my property, I trap it and send it to the shelter specifically so the owner gets fined, even though I know who owns it. It's what our local council/government recommend we do considering the owners already know it's illegal for pet cats to be off their property here (or even outside of their house after dark, which is almost always when we trap them in our yard).
So, is it deliberate that this is indistinguishable from making outside cats illegal? Otherwise how the heck are owners supposed to ensure cats stay on their property?
I have an electric fence; cats sense it and avoid it. 20+ years without a cat getting off the property.
Sounds like that's their problem to figure out, and I think that's right. I would 1000 times rather have more birds at my feeders than the neighbor's cat pooping in my yard, hunting birds and bothering my dog.
Let them put in a good fence, electric collar, leash with one of those zip line things - whatever they have to do.
you know how crazy you sound?
> In Faith's case, Wissner said, the neighbor apparently didn't realize the fence line and property line weren't the same
The concept of being on ranch property gets a bit nebulous in Wyoming when you realize much private land is checkerboarded with blm land and the ranchers have long term blm grazing leases. The dog being outside the rancher's private property doesn't mean it's not out doing its job.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Checkerboarding_(land)
Neutered? Good.
Abandoned, not neutered? - Not Good, and heading toward a feral life.
A pet cat wandering free is not in the latter category.
Turns out that's not a thing. https://duckduckgo.com/?q="proto+feral+cats"
Looks like neutered pet cats are just that.
Not all pet cats are neutered, those that aren't breed.
Where do you think feral cats come from then? They were not native to Australia (for example) until pet cats were bought over.
* https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-10-17/research-project-ding...
* https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-10-07/malupirti-springs-cam...
Doesn't help that pet dogs spend much of their time laying down, with perhaps a couple brief respites in the form of a gentle walk.
They gain weight.
A healthy dog can often look malnourished to pet owners.
Our neighbor's mom called the animal warden on us for not feeding him. He eats better than I do.
Her dog is a morbidly obese miniature collie.
Most people's perspective of ideal animal shapes is incorrect.
After that cat passed, we tried to adopt a dog from the local shelters. All required an interview and house visit, with random unscheduled visits within the 6 months after. We bought a puppy from some random kid.
edit: "any indication that you would let the cat outside" and "outdoor cat" are not the same thing. I failed because I said we had a patio we would let the cat sit on, in nice weather, on the second floor, or because we were going to see if we could leash train it (my friend had with his cat). I don't know, the lady seemed very angry the whole interview. The leash training failed before it made its way outdoors, but the sun was enjoyed.
Eventually we took the one with the outdoors obsession to the vet who told us we could either put her on Prozac or start letting her out. At that point we started letting her out (in our quiet suburb nowhere near a major road), and she instantly became an extremely happy cat. Her sister lived as a happy indoor cat, while she would go out during the day and come in at night. She came back every night and they both lived to pass of kidney disease when they were 15.
I know a lot of people are extremely against cats going outside, but compared to some of my college friends who kept "emotional support" cats in minuscule dorm rooms, I would much rather let a cat out than imprison it. I don't really buy the songbird thing in built up suburbia.
A house visit to adopt a dog seems excessive. But this might be organizational scar tissue: mentally ill people adopting and hoarding animals, for example.
Depending on the jurisdiction, any adoption contract that says you have to allow unscheduled visits 6 months after may not be enforceable. Treat your adopted pet well and tell anyone who interferes to f off.
- Cats are natural, suburb density is probably not. Homestead cats have a place as long as we stock food.
- Anything involving money to support AN org should have stringent red tape.
- telling people to fuck off is okay
Most domesticated cats demonstrably have no issues thriving while feral. They are not well-adapted to every environment they’ve been introduced but they do pretty well in many. Their main issue in places like North America is prodigious predation in the wild, which is mitigated when living near humans.
The other thing about shelters is they often deal with animals from abusive or neglectful homes. Random visits are likely excessive, but they are just trying to prevent the animal from enduring the same situation with new owners (and likely trying to ensure the new owners can handle an animal that has a history of being abused).
In some parts of the US outdoor cats are an essential bulwark against rodent invasion. It is healthy for the cats and very effective organic rodent control. They do get some birds but the bulk of their activity is rodents. There are places you can’t live without them.
Depending on the situation, outdoor cats can also live a long time. We had farm cats when I was growing up that spent a large part of their time outdoors during the day. They were smart, social, and typically lived 15-20 years before old age caught up with them.
Predation mostly impacts cats that are either obviously stupid or aggressively anti-social in my experience.
Domestic cats are only a part of civilisation, not nature.
As much as red tailed hawks are. And crows (which I've watched eat songbirds).
We had one dog growing up that liked to commune with a particular herd of cattle (in a friendly way) in a distant field on occasion, and nobody and nothing could stop it when it had that inclination. Dog on a mission.
Dogs are smart and learn outer boundaries and roam looking for predators, stock are kept bounded and once an area is cropped (to some degree) they are moved to another grazing area.
> The sheep were still grazing on the other side of the fence, but their guardian had vanished.
> ...
> According to Wissner, his dog was wearing a collar with a rabies tag and a halter bearing a plate with his name, address and contact information.
The caption for the photo:
> Shepherdess Brittany Cole Bush with a herd of goats on the Arambel Ranch in western Wyoming. (Brittany Cole Bush)
> According to Wissner, his dog was wearing a collar with a rabies tag and a halter bearing a plate with his name, address and contact information.