A Problem with the Stray Dog Contraceptive Campaign

A non-governmental organisation called “600 Million Stray Dogs Need You” is running a “global project to end more animal suffering and death than any project in history”. The aim is to develop an oral contraceptive for dogs that would be used to “free virtually every humane society world wide of their most expensive problem: animal overpopulation”.  

This campaign is very heavy on emotional rhetoric but short on real detail and explanation. The idea that 600 million stray dogs are living a life of suffering in deplorable conditions and are in imminent risk of a violent death at the hands of people is a gross exaggeration to support their project but to me ultimately damages their credibility.

Many unowned dogs do fit their view and would benefit from our help but as I keep arguing many other unowned dogs are not in any sense stray, they do not cause a problem, they have apparently very fulfilling lives and should be left exactly as they are. To lump them all together as strays is wrong and a very western attitude.

This campaign tries to give the impression that this magic pill can solve the problem by itself without mentioning the fact that it would have zero effective on the pet abandonment which fuels the increase in strays in the first place nor the fact that in many cities the underlying problem is waste management and without stray dogs to eat the waste they would just be replaced by rats or truly fetid streets.

I absolutely agree that such an oral contraceptive would be an extremely useful tool in many situations but absolutely disagree with their disingenuous simplification of the problem to suit their own agenda.

Learn more about the lives and issue of unowned dogs in my e-book ”A Stray View” available from Bangkok Books (readable as .pdf on any computer)