Lost lives

birds

An image few of us see but a daily reality for those working in animals shelters.

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PeakXV

When I was there in 1999/2000, there was an article in the newspaper about some foreigners(German, I think) that were finding homes abroad for the Indian stray dogs. Do you know anything about that Birds - and if so it did/has it catch/caught much wind?

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Don't go to India ~ Pre-trip Warnings & Misconceptions?

birds

Hi Peak,

Sorry for the late reply.

Every now and then there are foreigners trying to do this but to my knowledge its success has been limited.

While I am not against it, I do not think it is the best solution.

I believe that if you own a dog or cat and you return back to your home country you should take it with you (instead of leaving it behind in the hope that a neighbour/friend will keep his faint promise to look after it, or worse just leaving it on the beach or dropping it at a shelter) but I am not sure whether it makes sense to bring Indian animals to another country if no owner is waiting.

In most countries in the world the shelters are full and still have to put many animals down. It is difficult to get up to date statistics but apparently the USA euthanises between 4 to 6 million annually, Italy 4 million, France 2 million and the UK some 20,000. (If anybody has different statistics I would be interest to learn about it).

Of course, some of these are animals for which there was no hope because they were too sick but many are healthy but there are no homes available.

In other countries (for example the Netherlands and Germany) apparently shelters need to kill not so much because there are not sufficient homes but because people want different type of dogs/cats. So on the one hand one type of animals get killed while at the other end new, more desirable ones are brought in (this annoys me possibly most of all!!).

Unfortunately it looks like India is also taking this road. Lots of so called pedigrees are brought in while strays are being killed. Lots of lives could be saved if only:

- the government would strictly regulate the breeding
- made it mandatory that owners sterilise their dogs/cats, and
- some Bollywood star would make an advert with a positive role for a stray animal

(instead of those annoying Hutch adverts which have resulted in lots of pug puppies being sold but even more killed as it is difficult to breed them).

carlaeb

This is a problem everywhere to a certain extent. People in the US pay a lot of money for pure breed dogs when you can pick up a mutt for free. I experienced a new twist to this in India though when a rickshaw driver told me that he doesn't walk or play with his dog. Just lets the dog hang out in front of his house and throws him some food. (He is kind to the dog- the dog is not tied up and he took the dog to be neutered, so I'm not saying he is a bad dog owner, just that he doesn't play with him or walk him or train him.) Anyway, I asked why and he told me because his dog is just a local dog (which means just a mixed breed) and not an expensive, smart pure bred.

I wonder if there is some confusion here. Obviously people have bigger fish to fry in India with making their own ends meet- dogs aren't a priority. But could it be that many honestly don't know that a mixed breed dog can learn just as much and be just as friendly as a pure breed dog? Most people here haven't been around dogs a lot. They see them misbehaving in the streets, then they see nicely groomed, well-trained pure breeds walking with their owners. So they might make the assumption that it is the dog that makes the difference, not the time the owner spent with the dog?

Or maybe not. Just a thought.

trustindia

Street dogs are vermin to most Indians, not without cause of course, they do carry some lovely parasites and diseases. I've tried to explain that these dogs are just are smart and friendly as bred dogs and have a lot more character probably, all to deaf ears. Most Indians will pay for the pedigree every time. It's a shame given the size of the problem.
It's just one of those things that illustrates, that no matter how we want it to be India, isn't like our home countries, the, priorities are different, sentiments, morals.

That's sometimes hard going for visitors or even thoise lucky enough to live there.

It's a whole new set of rules and as an outsider you often have to consider this difference and bite your tongue, India is what India is, a few westerners won't change that in a generation.

The dog problem is very sad, cruelty to these beasts is meted out by many and I've found amongst the ordinary people of India kids are often brought up to fear and despise dogs. Again there's an element of sense in this, in trying to protect your kids from harm.
However the upbringing sometimes just leads to more cluelty.

The dogs are of course a problem for local citizens, a daily problem, from being/feeling harrassed, to being kept wake all night by howling mutts.

Culls have been employed, poisoning by locals is a regular occurence, or indeed being savagely beaten.
Dogs die of malnutrition and disease, pups taken by rats. It's not a great life.

The answer would probably be mass sterilisation, but who would foot the bill for that. Maybe Bill Gates.

So it's a sad mess for the dogs and the people also effected, one of those intractable Indian problems.

Until it's fixed the sad sight of dead puppies will continue to haunt us.

birds

To be honest this is the best type of house we can hope for in Goa! Very, very rarely we find people who walk and play with their dogs. If people take in strays without tying them up, feeding them and giving them basic medical care, we are already very pleased.

Please can you ask him to tell you if he knows of other people who want local dogs. This is the best way for us to find homes.

In general I find that in Goa/India many pedigrees lead a poorer life as people tend to be afraid to let them lose, they get only short walks, little interaction with other dogs, etc.

carlaeb

Well this was just a rickshaw driver I was talking to. I don't know him personally. I had my dog with me, so that is how we started talking about dogs. The local dogs here are rough- they bark and chase my dog when I'm walking. I had to hit one with a stick though I tried not to hit him very hard. But you are correct that they look like they have a much better life than the ones I see tied to a patio.

There are four little girls, all under 7, who come up to my fence and yell at my dog in sweet high voices "Lucy Lucy Lucy". Then she comes running up to the fence and the girls run away screaming in the other direction. Then Lucy loses interest and goes back to the porch. The girls come up to the fence again "Lucy Lucy Lucy" and it all starts over. I brought them some treats and showed them how to make her shake and how to feed her. Only one was brave enough to do it, but the other three made her do it over and over again. They thought she was really brave to put her fingers so close to a dog's mouth. I'm surprised to see children who don't know how to play with dogs. They are obviously very interested.

PeakXV

I don't believe I would own a dog in India unless I had an acre or two of enclosed estate for the beast to roam freely. The only time I took a friend's dog for a walk in India, we quickly got surrounded by street dogs and needed a wing, prayer, stick, and a bit of help from the local passersby to get out of that near poochbrawl.

Haylo

In a country with rabies, I'm not surprised that kids are taught not to play with dogs.

Of course very few dogs are rabid, but parents are not known for being rational when it comes to their kids. For instance very few men are peodophiles and most abuse is carried out by family and "friends" but that doesn't stop parents from thinking the best thing do to is to teach their kids to be afraid of strangers.

It's probably only kids who have dogs, or who have friends who have pet dogs who know how much fun they can be to play with.

That's interesting, perhaps there is genuinely no understanding that some breeds of pedigree dogs are less intelligent, less easily trained and less healthy than a similarly well looked after mongrel?

Edited to add: What am I saying? They probably already know that. The bottom line is that street dogs just aren't "pretty" enough for the fashion victims for whom image is all.

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birds

I think it is important to realise that liking animals has not much to do with nationality, religion or even wealth. I know plenty of Indians who look better after their animals than many, many foreigners.

In our experience many foreigners in Goa leave their animals behind or euthanise them when it suits them.

On the same token, I know so many Indian households which have several cats and dogs while they are really quite poor.

In fact, we found that very often poor households look very well after their animals. I know of one lady who does not spend money to go to the doctor but feeds her 6 cats and 3 dogs (For the record I do not approve of this).

There are also lots of people in India who are involved in grass root animal welfare but you will never hear about them.

No need for Bill Gates. The problem is not money but participation. In fact the Indian government with help of the World Health Organisation pays for about INR 600 per dog that is sterilised by shelters.

The problem is that people can not be bothered to help the shelters by bringing in friendly strays and, worse, many refuse to sterilise their own dogs.

It is worth noting in this that the vast majority of stray dogs get pregnant through owner-dogs (many ex-strays themselves). People are often surprised about this but you have to imagine that when male dogs fight over a female, a well-fed, healthy owner dog is more likely to win/scare off male strays. So they get the girl.

To solve the stray population, apart from the continuation of the neuter and vaccinate programmes, other essential steps in this will be:
- to make it mandatory for all pet owners to sterilise/neuter their animals (pedigrees as well as strays).
- to curb the flow of pedigree animals,
- to make breeding of pedigrees extremely costly,

I know legislation is difficult to enforce but it is a start and it should be followed by awareness programmes.

birds

They are alert, know danger when they see it and are certainly not hard to come by. Street dogs are now being roped in for an explosives detection course in Maoist violence-hit Chhattisgarh. Four street dogs have just graduated in a nine-month Improvised Explosive Devices (IED) detection course from the Counter Terrorism and Jungle Warfare College (CTJWC) in Kanker district, 140 km from here.

They are soon to be posted in the hilly, forested southern interiors of the state - a hotbed of Maoist insurgency though traditionally it's Alsatians and Labradors that have been used as sniffer dogs.

"I picked up four street dogs within my college premises and handed them over to 10 trainers to admit them to the CTJWC in July 2007 for a complete nine-month training. They are called Lily, Sally, Teja and Kareena," B.K. Ponwar, director of CTJWC, told IANS.

"With the first batch having completed its training April 1, the three dogs are now fully capable of detecting IEDs up to six inches below the ground surface," said Ponwar, a retired brigadier of the Indian Army.

The CTJWC has now picked up two more street dogs and are looking for at least four to six more healthy puppies to begin the second batch of training. The first lesson of the course is of course 'how to be obedient'.

"These trained street dogs can detect explosives up to 20 inches below the surface if advanced training capsules are offered," Ponwar claimed. "I found them tougher, harder, sharper and more active than pedigreed dogs during the training period.

"This is the first time in India that street dogs have been enrolled for an IED detection course. I haven't heard of stray dogs being trained anywhere else for sniffing out explosives," Ponwar said.

"Since one sniffer dog costs about Rs.85,000, it's time the Indian forces looked for mongrels or street dogs as a perfect alternative to species like Labradors and Alsatians that are favoured."

The Chhattisgarh government set up the CTJWC in August 2005 and roped in Ponwar as director. He was then heading the Indian Army's prestigious Counter Insurgency and Jungle Warfare School in Mizoram. Chhattisgarh is one of the states worst hit by Maoist insurgency.

Ponwar said: "Trained street dogs can help contain insurgency and terrorism because the country is short of sniffer dogs in proportion to their demands and the area of armed conflict and insurgency is widening by the day."

Officials at the Chhattisgarh police headquarters here say that the trained street dogs will soon be posted in either Bijapur or Dantewada district, which witnessed a flurry of landmine attacks by guerrillas on police and civilians facilities.

Sujeet Kumar can be contacted at sujeet.k@ians.in

birds

Surgeon, inventor and philanthropist Dr. Gary Michelson is offering a $25 million prize for the first entity to develop a single dose sterilant for male and female cats and dogs, and up to $50 million in grants to support research toward that end.

This initiative is one of the biggest things to happen in the field of (stray) animal population control. Funding will go a long to attract researchers and advance science in cat and dog fertility control.



See also:
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/...lization_N.htm
http://www.forbes.com/forbes/2008/1006/104.html
http://www.foundanimals.org/about-mi...son-prize.html