To the Editor,

Please allow me to address an issue reported on the front page of your Oct. 6 edition. Until faced with a dog or dog pack attack personally, can anyone fathom the ferocity?

I cannot, and spending most of my life raising livestock, I have survived three dog attacks, and my father and two of my children survived a dog pack attack, but only because I was armed. Still, I can somewhat imagine the horror because I have witnessed the results of dog attacks on our livestock.

Space will not allow me to share the records I started keeping in 1996, when my father and my two youngest children were attacked by a pack of vicious dogs. May I encourage the Internet literate to read Editor Betsy Finklea’s Feb. 25, 2011, article, “Deadly Attack By Dogs Is One Of Three In Recent Years,” in the Dillon Herald of Dillon, S.C. And any of the numerous accounts of the attack on Rodney McAllister in St. Louis, Mo., who was not just killed, but partially consumed by a dog pack.

I am an animal lover raised by animal lovers, but I have killed a number of savage dogs during vicious attacks.

I have the greatest respect for those who work so diligently to preserve the lives of unwanted animals, but what is gained by not euthanizing the unadoptable animals no one wants? If guilty human criminals are incarcerated in cells for punishment, how can animals innocent of any wrongdoing enjoy 24/7 in cages or pens waiting for adoptions that never come? Irresponsible pet owners, who fail to spay and neuter, have filled our communities with strays. No matter how harmless they may be individually, when dogs enter packs, they follow the pack leader no matter how vicious.

For our children’s and our own safety, as well as that of our pets and farmer’s livestock, isn’t it time to rid our communities of stray dogs, especially those that run in packs, and revert to a primitive state as a result? Euthanasia is painless; isn’t it a far cry better than being continually caged or penned, and unloved?

Robert C. Currie Jr.

Laurinburg