Shift in Attitude to Adopting Stray Dogs?

Here is an interesting article partly about the efforts of one particular woman to help Delhi’s desi dogs (stray or street dogs) in India. She is part of a network of people including security guards who form what they call the “anti anti-desi dog brigade” to counter the vocal efforts of those who say the dogs are a menace. The dogs’ defenders argue that “human interaction makes the dogs less aggressive, and easier to take in for sterilization”. This is exactly my feeling that good-natured interaction between people and unowned dogs produces good-natured dogs whilst aggression from us breeds aggression from them.

The other part of the article that I found interesting was the section on adoption. Apparently, in Delhi, “Stray dogs are gaining acceptability as house pets” particularly with the younger generation and now there is even a website to encourage and facilitate international adoption of Indian desi dogs which has arranged over 900 overseas adoptions.

My two concerns with this trend are that it will inevitably mean that village dogs that are unowned but actually living very good lives will get adopted unnecessarily and there is a danger that the desi dog ends up getting hijacked as a dog “breed” with breed standards and associated snobbery attached. The desi dogs undoubtedly include abandoned pets but their most striking feature to me is the lack of direct human control. Becoming a breed would take that away.

However, I’m also taking a more optimistic view that this adoption trend could be a small but significant step in getting westerners to accept unowned street dogs in other parts of the world. At present it is acceptance through adoption but that is an improvement on “pariah” and perhaps the interest and need to select which dogs to adopt will result in people taking a closer look at the actual lives that these dogs are leading, which could lead to questioning the need to save or deal with them all.

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)