They were probably just waiting for a good pretext.

Moreover, despite the utter stupidity of the act itself, methods that are being used to carry out this mass slaughter are nothing short of horrendous: Dogs are being poisoned with strychnine—a deadly as well as painful chemical—shot in the streets among public, or are first captured with thorny metal clamps and then thrown into trucks to be disposed of, in quite the same fashion as used with plastic garbage. Many are left to suffer and die in agony, while others are taken to facilities where they are killed in brutal ways.

Eyewitnesses have described scenes of gunmen patrolling neighbourhoods, shooting dogs on sight, and leaving wounded ones to bleed out as they lie where they get shot. In some cases, dogs that, unluckily, survive the initial attack are beaten to death with shovels. The bodies are often dumped in mass graves, sometimes while the animals are still conscious.

Species “cleansing”