Objecting to Change in Turkey’s Street Dog Policy

The International Fund for Animal Welfare has published a good article (here) about a planned change in Turkey’s animal welfare legislation.

In summary, they object to the proposal to move away from capture-neuter-vaccinate-return (CNVR) to capture-neuter-vaccinate-and-then-permanently-hold-in-shelters, with concerns about what this would do for the animals’ welfare. They argue that the old laws were not given a chance as the implementation and enforcement were inadequate, which is a common story across many countries.

What I particularly like about the author’s approach in this article is the way she shifts the argument away from dealing with the stray dogs towards focusing on the underlying problem of where the dogs come from in the first place. Pointing out that even with good implementation and enforcement, CNVR could never be a long-term solution on its own “in a country where roaming dogs come to be on the street for a variety of reasons”.

This backs up my belief that the key is to tackle people’s behaviour more than the dogs.

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)