Looking for advice! Building a shelter for dogs in a forest.

Toddy

Mod
Mod
Jan 21, 2005
39,133
4,810
S. Lanarkshire
…..and who owns the forest ? and will they want what would be a pack of wild dogs hunting in it ?

Seriously, the kindest thing you can do for these dogs is to arrange funds or resources that pays for a vet to sterilise as many of them as possible.
Living as they do their life expectancy is a handful of years at best. If you stop the uncontrolled breeding (which is what human society did as they changed them from wild to domesticated) and by natural selection (or selective euthanasia of those who are unfit/injured, etc.,) reduce their numbers and improve their health, then they're no longer so likely to be viewed as pests.
At that point folks start to value them again.
Stray dogs numbers don't reduce by themselves.
If you feed them, then they breed.

A big heart is a good thing, but it needs a thinking brain to be effective.

M
 

C_Claycomb

Moderator staff
Mod
Oct 6, 2003
7,632
2,705
Bedfordshire
It doesn't happen often ;) but I am fully in agreement with Toddy!!

Those dogs do not need a dog village in the forest. The forest sure as heck doesn't need several hundred feral dogs hunting through it. I cannot think of a single situation anywhere in the world where a large number of previously domestic type animals going feral and running loose over the landscape has been a good thing.

Trying to move a significant number from the town to the forest seems like it has low odds of long term "success", like trying to brush water uphill! I write "success" because if you succeed in making your dog village sufficiently comfortable with enough food around to hold the dogs in the area, chances are they will make puppies and increase the feral population, which doesn't seem like it should be the aim.

If you wanted to change the lives of a few dogs (starting small and seeing where it goes) I think you would be far better off trying to create a stray dog training and rehabilitation centre in town. Take in strays, feed, medicate, neuter, train and attempt to re-home. Doesn't sound as exciting as building dens in the woods, trapping food and living with a dog pack, but more likely to be of benefit to your town and the dogs.
 

Tengu

Full Member
Jan 10, 2006
13,014
1,638
51
Wiltshire
Toddy is right.

And the dogs `want` to live in town. They are scavengers, -why should they learn to hunt? Dogs are smart!

They are evolved to live in town.

You need a body of sterilised animals to keep out the rest. (which will cost money.)

Oh, and shoot the rest, and try to keep the food supply down.

This whole idea is daft as a brush. (Unless you are in the business of gaining as many new pets as possible...which presumably mean `you` will be responsible for them...)

(Feral dogs can make great pets as they are tough and independent...isnt the Canan breed based on Pi dogs?)
 

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