My dog Ripley (center) and his friends in the woods on a hike.

I had never heard of a feral dog before college…

…other than dingos, of course, but those were in Australia.

When I moved to Mississippi at 18, I had never heard of feral dogs in the United States before or seen a stray dog with my own eyes. I had met plenty of stray cats back home in Pennsylvania, but they were always strays– not feral– as happy as a house cat to see me on walks home from school. During my senior year of high school, my home state made it a crime to leave dogs tethered outside in freezing temperatures, part of an anti-cruelty act called Libre’s law.

Coming to an area where people got dogs and cats by being chosen– when the animal simply showed up on their porch, rather than paying adoption fees, was new. As a reporter in Mississippi the next summer, I found that my new home was the only state that did not recognize aggravated animal cruelty as a felony. I had never even met anyone with an unspayed or unneutered dog before moving here either, other than dog breeders.

I grew up loving animals– despite being bitten by cats, horses, chickens, rabbits, dogs and an emu over the years– so I’m always excited to get assigned to Mississippi’s animal related stories.