Almost everyday there are
stories in the news about the stray dog problem in India with particular focus
on the Kashmir valley where there seems to be an above average incidence of attacks
on people. This could just be a reporting bias of a currently popular topic but
I have often wondered why there is such an apparent contrast between this
situation and my own experience of free-ranging dogs in Thailand where any
friction between people and dogs is usually comparatively minor and often
caused by pets rather than street dogs.
An article about the dog
problem in Srinagar city in the Kashmir valley on Radio
Netherlands Worldwide doesn’t actually answer this question but does give some interesting
background and shines a blinding light on their particular problem with this
single comment:
“The canine
growth is helped along by the protein rich diet to be found in the 360 metric
tons of garbage left on the streets by the primarily meat eating Kashmiris.”
Unfortunately, the article
fails to take its own bait and carries on to discuss solving the problem
through dog management without mention of the need for better waste management.
It is hard to say how
aggressiveness towards people fits in but here are some thoughts of mine.
All the photographs
published in these stories show packs of placid dogs living calmly next to
people suggesting that most of the time they are not a problem. If the apparent
aggressiveness is real then what is it that triggers it? Unfortunately, news
reports rarely give enough detail to judge this.
The fact that they seem to
be living in good-sized packs may play a role as facilitated aggression is a
common mechanism for a situation to spiral out of control. This is where one
dog reacting to a person triggers others to do the same, which often makes the
person behave in a way that unwittingly provokes the dogs further (staring
directly at them or moving away quickly, for example). In effect the dogs wind
each other up which causes panic in the person which triggers a stronger
reaction in the dogs, often ending up with the person running away with the
dogs giving chase – a race that the dogs will win. This is more likely to
happen with a denser population of dogs on the street.
Another factor could be
the general treatment of dogs by the human population. In Thailand, as
everywhere, there is some aggressive and callous treatment of street dogs but
by far the overwhelming attitude is acceptance, with some positive interaction and
most people just ignoring the animals. Thereby, most of the time the dogs do
not see people as a threat so do not act aggressively towards them. This
situation is confused by abandoned pets but in effect, Thailand’s easy-going,
laid-back culture rubs off on the dogs. However, if people in a certain place
have a more aggressive attitude towards the dogs with more common
stone-throwing, kicking and stick-bashing then the dogs will be more likely to
perceive a potential threat from people and react aggressively towards them. Again,
I have no information to judge whether this is actually the case in Kashmir.
The role of
pets-on-the-loose, the history of abandonment versus street-born dogs and the
nature of how owned dogs are used in the area are all relevant aspects untouched on in
newspaper reports. For example, a street dog population largely made up of
abandoned ex-guard dogs would have a very different attitude towards people
than a population of village dogs who have lived on the streets for generations.
Better waste disposal is
part of the answer but to really understand and thereby solve this problem far
more information is needed than the typically shallow, reactionary press
reports we usually get.
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