Stray Dog Adoption in Project Chile

In the Chilean city of Antofagasta an animal welfare organisation, Ecoalberque Canino, is initiating a project to catch, clean-up and put up for adoption abandoned pet dogs straying around the area (see here for more detail).

In itself this is not big news as many groups around the world have run similar projects. I just wanted to post this one as an example because, although it is a seemingly well-planned project, which includes offering to give people’s pets a free “sanitizing bath”, I suspect their problem will be maintaining the momentum after the initial publicity has died down. Interest always wanes.

Another potential problem with these projects is that they do not necessarily address the reasons behind the pet dog abandonment and thereby risk just adding to the problem via more short-term pets. The use of micro-chipping in this case may be a partial solution.

Although I do not know this city, I also wonder whether all of these dogs that will be rounded up do actually need saving. It may well be that many are actually already enjoying a reasonable life without causing any problems. For many unowned dogs the street is a perfectly acceptable home but no welfare project that I have come across seriously takes this into consideration.

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)