I think well meaning liberals want to believe that all of society’s problems can be solved without any form of coercion, and that is simply not the case. If someone is homeless and has a dog, and there is a shelter bed for them, you may just need to force them to give up their dog and move to the shelter (or else face arrest). There are overriding concerns greater than letting people keep their pets.

I recognize the solutions are more complex than just force people to give up their pets, but most of those solutions involve some application of coercive force.

Edit: I did not explicitly spell this out, but clearly if you take away the dog it should be put up for adoption, not executed on the street while the owner is forced to watch, for maximum cruelty. Some people seem to think I was advocating something like the latter.