Coexisting With Wildlife When It Comes To Our Furry Friends

Part 1-Direct Impacts

One of my favorite things to do with my dogs is find a local trail and take them out for a hike. My dogs are trained with off leash e-collar system, so I often let them run if there are no other people and/or dogs around. I pretty much make them stick to the trail, and always keep them within eyesight. Luckily we have never run into a wild animal while on the trail, however, the mere presence of dogs can have direct and indirect impacts on local wildlife populations¹. In this post I will explore the different ways our pets, primarily cats and dogs, can impact wildlife and the ways you can reduce those impacts.

The most obvious impact that comes to mind is direct interaction between your domestic animal and a wild animal. Let’s get back to the idea of hiking with dogs on a trail. One of a dog owners biggest fears is when their dog sees a porcupine and takes off running. Porcupines are not particularly fast animals, so their natural armor serves as a defense mechanism to compensate. Porcupines have quills that stand up when the animal is threatened, contrary to popular belief, they cannot shoot quills from their body. The quills easily detach with the slightest touch, and hook into the skin of the attacking animal. Porcupine interactions with our dogs can be potentially fatal, often leaving pet owners with a jaded view and confrontational outlook on the critters.

As I previously mentioned, one way I avoid running into wildlife while hiking with my dogs is having them trained on an off leash e-collar system. Another great tactic is to know your habitat. Where are you taking your dogs for a walk? What animal is likely to live there based on that habitat? Are there certain times of the year in your area when wildlife is more likely to be active? These are all great questions to start with.

Other direct encounters with wildlife might be as simple as your dog chasing a squirrel in the yard or your cat catching a rodent or bird and bringing it to your doorstep as a gift. While these incidents seem harmless at the individual level, when multiplied by the approximate 90 million dogs and 94 million cats in the United States alone², you can begin to imagine the toll that domestic animals have on wildlife populations. Studies estimate that free-ranging cats kill 1.3-4.0 billion birds and 6.3 billion mammals annually, while domestic dog predation of wildlife is lesser known³.

Ownership of domesticated animals has evolved not only in the past several hundred if not thousand years, but even more so over the past few decades. Consideration of domesticated animals well-being from nutrition to mental enrichment has been of increased concern for pet owners.

I struggle with this myself, as my husband and I are the proud parents of six fur babies, four cats and two dogs. It’s a lot at times, and both working full time jobs, we have had to find ways to provide our pets with mental and physical enrichment while home and away. The best balance for us has to been to build outdoor enclosures that allow our pets the joy of the outdoors while preventing them from causing harm to wildlife. For the cats, we constructed a catio. Yes, you read that right, a CATIO, cat-patio. The cats enter the catio from a window in our basement for easy indoor/outdoor access. For the dogs, we purchased a 10’x10’ chain link pen that connects to a section of our garage, so the dogs also have indoor/outdoor access.

Ultimately, what works best for you and your furry friend will depend on your circumstances, but there is always a way to find compromise in order to successfully coexist with wildlife.

What are the take aways:

• Domestic animals, particularly cats and dogs, directly and indirectly impact wildlife
• Knowing your surrounding habitat can help identify potential wildlife concerns and help you avoid negative encounters
• Training dogs to off-leash e-collar systems, building outdoor enclosures, and supervised outdoor access are just a few ways we can better coexist with wildlife when it comes to our furry friends

Citations

1. Benjamin E. Lenth, Richard L. Knight, and Mark E. Brennan “The Effects of Dogs on Wildlife Communities,” Natural Areas Journal 28(3), (1 July 2008). https://doi.org/10.3375/0885-8608(2008)28[218:TEODOW]2.0.CO;2
2. “United States – Number of Pet, by Species, 2017/2018 | Statistic.” Statista, www.statista.com/statistics/198095/pets-in-the-united-states-by-type-in-2008/.
3. Scott R. Loss, Tom Will, Peter P. Marra. Nature Communications volume4, Article number: 1396 (2013)