Animal Realities.

When I was a child during the 1940's, 50's and 60's New Mexico's population was less than one half million people, most of that amount living in small towns. The predominant income of those who lived outside of the city was agriculture, because the land was only suited for it. Most of the farming being carried out along the Rio Grande, San Juan and the Pecos Rivers, with some dry farming along the eastern border with Texas. Water is the life blood of the desert and livestock raising, or ranching was done where rain runoff could be captured in earthen tanks, or sucked from the ground by windmill power.

The northern regions of New Mexico beginning just a little south of Albuquerque possessed some of the best grassland in the world, and the area where I was born known as the Staked Plains is just a sea of tall flowing grass in good years and it is only suited for cattle production.

The vast majority of southern New Mexico is a harsh desert environment where a rancher can only run a cow calf pair per section of land (640) acres when grass and water is available. It is a difficult, poor way to try to make a living in a treacherous non forgiving environment, but it is a way of life that has been cherished by the ranchers, the Spanish since the late 1500's when the first Spanish soldiers traveled to New Mexico from Mexico.

The first anglos who came to New Mexico in the 1840's fell in love with the beauty of the state and soon adopted the ranching practises of the Spanish settlers. They adopted the language out of necessity to communicate, riding gear of the Spanish vaqueros and today it is hard to distinguish the three major cultures that live and work side by side together in the livestock industry. The Indians being the third culture to adopt the Spanish ranching culture as well.

I am certain that it is difficult to impossible for a person who was not raised in this unique environment to understand it, especially a person who has been raised in the city where dogs and cats are the predominant animal of choice, and they are able to lavish attention on these animals, beloved pets who in essence become a part of the family. I know people who spend thousands of dollars on veterinary bills per year on their pets and this crowd believes that this should be the norm everywhere.

Where I grew up there were no veterinarians, if one was to be found it was necessary to travel a hundred miles to a city such as Albuquerque, Roswell or Hobbs at times to see one and so most ranchers did their own veterinary work themselves. It was necessary to be able to castrate bulls, doctor for screw worms, help pull a calf from its mother, and at times put an animal down that was suffering from an injury that could not be treated. This was reality because of the circumstances.

Because New Mexico was at that time a predominantly livestock state, the laws of the land were written to facilitate the raising of livestock. Loose dogs cannot be tolerated in a livestock environment, and so feral dogs or in some cases dogs who had ecaped an owner in town were killed by ranchers to protect their livestock, and the law was behind the rancher.

If you wanted to keep a dog, keep your dog in your yard. There was no SPCA, or animal pounds at that time nor personnel whose job it was to catch errant animals.

The dog or cat was killed for two reasons: To protect livestock, and as a deterant to hydrophobia that was rampant with skunks. The fear of an animal with hydrophobia was burned deeply into my brain when I was kid because it was a real thing. I knew childhood friends who received the extremely painful injections, and I knew of a child who died a horrible death due to contracting hydrophobia from an infected cat.

I have shot and killed my own beloved dogs whose suffering could not be remedied, one who was dying a horrible death from being bitten in the face by a rattlesnake; his breathing passages shutting off due to the effects of injection of venom from the snake. I have shot and killed horses whose legs were broken beyond repair, who were too far away from a veterinarian and could not have been hauled to one anyhow.

These were life and death issues common to all who live in that harsh environment, and other livestock environments throughout the world. Before anyone judges the harshness used by us to deal with the reality of life, remember to not apply the "norm" of your city life animal care. It does not exist and never will exist in most environments outside of your world.