Huskies aren't necessarily concerned with what you want to "let" them do. They're notorious escape artists, and of course they're hardwired to run. The owner said they'd gotten out only an hour before the shooting.
I understand that. I've worked with people who have huskies and known a lot of them. One of our neighbors had one who escaped constantly, but he was far more likely to come try to sleep on your porch than bother your cows, so nobody really cared much.
I don't feel the dogs deserve to be shot, and never said anything to indicate that. Just that, in many rural areas, they would be if they were bothering livestock. These cows are a farmer's livelihood and, in many cases, the cows owner may care as much about them as you do about your dogs. This is certainly the case for my step-father, who has threatened to shoot a dog before that was constantly escaping the yard (it didn't much care what the owner thought, either) and *killing* our animals. (He didn't have to shoot the dog, and used the threat as a last resort after trying to chase/scare the dog away, calling the owners, talking to the owners, and calling animal control. Only the threat of shooting their dog got these owners to finally keep him from killing our animals.)
There are definitely compassionate alternatives to simply shooting a dog first and asking questions later. I think everyone can agree on that. I think, had the guy tried to call the dogs, they'd probably have come up to him like big, dumb, goofy huskies and gotten all excited and he could have leashed them and taken them to his local animal control facility. But this guy, by all accounts, doesn't sound like the brightest of people. According to news reports, he was convinced the dogs were wolves. Big, dumb, goofy, collar wearing wolves.
