Band offers $15 bounty for dead dogs

Another northern Saskatchewan community is struggling to deal with abandoned dogs — even offering a $15 bounty for them.

Recently La Ronge hired shooters to destroy stray dogs in the town of 2,700.

Now Wahpeton Dakota First Nation, located about 10 kilometres north of Prince Albert, is having similar problems.

Band members say outsiders are driving onto the reserve and abandoning their dogs.

The animals form packs and menace people, sometimes roaming into the local schoolyard and frightening children.

According to Coun. Cy Standing, the situation has forced some people to carry protection.

Continue Article

"It's getting to be a major problem," he said. "Ladies around here, they walk around with sticks in case there is a danger."

In response to the problem, the band has started offering a $15 bounty on the dogs.

Wahpeton resident Carla Omani said the price tag has produced some unintended consequences.

She said she recently saw a youth pulling a tarp along the ground carrying dead dogs.

"He had shot them," she said. "Two dogs. He was dragging them around with him, and he come and ask if he could shoot my dog."

Pat Slater, manager of the Prince Albert Society for the Protection of Animals, said the problem of people abandoning animals far from their homes is not limited to Wahpeton.

"We come to work lots of times and there's animals tied to our gate or boxes of cats at the gate or just set inside."

Slater says the obvious way to deal with unwanted animals is through prevention — having pets spayed or neutered.

She urges people who see someone dumping an animal to write down their licence plate number and report it to police.

http://www.cbc.ca/canada/saskatchewan/story/2006/12/08/dead-dogs.html