It was interesting to discover all these pages and pages of passionate commentary on the subject with a spectrum of opinions. Some individuals expressed that it was absolutely cruel to punish a dog (spanking, yelling, hanging the dead chicken around its neck for a while), all the way to some stating the dog deserved to be put down; 'a life for a life', because chickens are pets too and those dogs murdered them. The former opinion was too bleeding-heart, but the latter was blind hypocriticism. If someone truly followed that principle, they'd have to be taken out back with the shotgun after a steak dinner. I'm curious what different people define as moral when it comes to killing other living things, and those living things killing other living things.
In a book by Robert M. Pirsig ('Lila', as I remember) this issue is discussed. The way I interpreted his philosophy was that it is more moral for a species of higher intelligence to kill a species of lower intelligence, since life is all about progression and it would be regressive to destroy the more evolved being. When the higher intelligence had to choose between killing two organisms of lesser but varying intelligence, the more intelligent of the two would be the moral one to spare.
So, would killing a pig be more immoral than killing a cow? Would a vegen be the most moral of all people, since they only eat plants?
Arguably, a dog that keeps killing livestock after continuous reprimanding might not be so intelligent anyway. However, killing a dog for the sake of a chicken is silly, especially because a chicken would probably be the first farm animal to eat you if it could. Killing a dog for killing a chicken because YOU wanted to eat the chicken...that makes more sense to me.
