The dog was a Yorkie....a bloody lap dog. I think you have to keep those dogs in the house. Hell, the rats might kill a Yorkie Everyone hates to lose a pet but helpless little dogs like the Yorkie and other toy dogs have to be protected.
That's a really sad thing for the Family in the O.P. & I feel for them, but here's
a different perspective....and a weird one coming from someone who, in part
of the package of having the girlfriend move in, was having her Pug move in to.
Modern domestic dogs descended from wolves I believe. Trapped in the body of
a Pug or a Yorkie or some kind'a purse-dog.....is still the mind of a wolf, and I think
that's cruel. breeding dogs into something Paris Hilton can cart around as a fashion
accessory is just wrong. A dog needs to be more (physically) than a fashion accessory.
Take a Pug, and google what it was just a 150yrs ago, and it was still a dog that could
defend itself and its human. Selective breeding turned it into a sickly thing with respiratory
issues that can't defend itself, and still has that wolf mind, and that must really mess with
it mentally to. It's just a really sad thing, and via selective breeding, we should try to breed
that breed (& any breed of dog ending with '-doodle') back into something that can defend
itself even if it's only for the individual dogs mental health.
Would you believe that the modern Pug was once know (before we screwed them into
what they currently are) as a Dutch Mastiff?
I know this won't be a popular stance but it's what I believe. I love dogs. Even this little Pug
that's a part of our home, but it doesn't change the fact that we've really screwed up in
creating Chihauhau's and such, and need to breed them back into dogs that are functional
for their own well being. Seriously, take a wolf, and give it a Chihauhau's body, and tell me
that it won't have mental issues between its instincts and capabilities?
A Coyote would think twice before try'n to make the dog below (or the person
walking it, or the child in the picture with the dog) a meal. The dog below could
defend its pack (including the child) from a predator, be it a two or four legged
predator.