For anybody interested in
getting a better understanding of the street dog issue in developing countries
I thoroughly recommend the following on-line document published by the British
Veterinary Association Overseas Group:
It is an academic case
study (focused on the Animal Birth Control (ABC) Programme in Jaipur, India) but
easy to read. Here are some cherry-picked highlights from it:
“In Britain we tend to neatly categorize dogs as either
'pets' or 'stray' depending on their ownership status. This classification is
oversimplified and inappropriate for many urban areas in 'developing'
countries.”
“[pet ownership] is a relatively new but growing concept in
Jaipur.”
“The most useful development of the [ABC] programme would
probably come from greater community involvement...”
“…research suggests that domesticated dogs cause more and
more serious bite injuries than feral dogs…”
“…there is a danger of following the western model of pet
ownership, assuming this is the 'right way', that dogs should live only as pets
and completely on human terms.”
“…elimination of street dogs ignores the role they may be
playing as companions to the poorest members of the community who are unable to
keep dogs as pets, providing them with protection, warmth and companionship.”
“The short to medium term aims of the [ABC] programme are to
create a stable, friendlier, healthier street dog population. However, the city
society is changing and there needs to be public debate about the longer term
aims of the programme - whether the Western model of pet ownership should
really be promoted or whether a different model, with dogs remaining a general
society responsibility, is advocated.”
This is the first time I have
seen Western involvement in a street dog ABC programme question their
assumptions and ultimate aims. ABC programmes can and do improve street dog
welfare but there are too many Western-run programmes based on the wrong assumption
that all street dogs are stray.
And bear in mind that this case
study is focused on the urban environment in developing countries and does not
touch on the rural situation in those countries that can probably teach us a lot about why things
can break down so badly in urban settings.
The one major omission from this
study as far as I can see is the role of pet dog abandonment in the “overpopulation”
of street dogs. My view is that the importance of solving this part of the
problem is very under-rated.
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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) |
Tuesday, January 29, 2013
Street Dog Population Control Case Study
Sunday, January 27, 2013
War Against Moscow’s Stray Dogs
Moscow’s vigilante “dog hunters”
who have killed an estimated 1,500 stray dogs around the city’s parks in recent
years have escalated their fight against the animals by openly organising a
“massive culling” event (reported here, for example).
Typically, they use poisoned bait,
which has also caused the deaths of several pet dogs, and use the internet to
exchange stories and tactics plus post photographs of the dead dogs and links
to news stories of their activities from around the world.
The boldness of this latest move
is quite shocking with apparently no attempt to conceal the intention or
meeting place, although, this does perhaps suggest that it is a publicity stunt
rather than a real intention. Animal rights groups have organised counter protests
whilst police say they will be present in order to “prevent cases of cruelty to
animals”.
As far as I understand, the “event” was due to take place last Friday (25th) but I have seen no reports yet as to what, if anything, actually happened.
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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) |
Stray Dog Attacks Girl But The Devil’s In The Detail
The Hindu newspaper reports a
nasty incident of a six-year-old girl being “suddenly attacked, without any
provocation” by a stray dog. The dog bit her face leaving severe injuries
including several broken teeth before being chased away by local residents who
heard her cries. The Hindu then says no more about the incident beyond the hospital
treatment she received leaving the reader with the impression that any street
dog could be capable of launching such an attack at any time.
The Times of India newspaper similarly
reports on this case confirming the injuries the girl suffered but then fortunately
also includes some details that give clues as to why this particular dog attacked
this particular girl.
Apparently the girl regularly
gave biscuits and snacks to stray dogs in the streets around her home but this
dog was new to the area and unknown to her. The attack happened after she
gently patted its head. It would be unfair on the girl to say that this
amounted to provocation but from the dog’s point of view this was exactly what
it was given the details that follow. Locals explained that the dog had been
chased out of a neighboring slum (for reasons unstated), was ravenous but had
been attacked by other dogs when trying to scavenge food, and finally that
local schoolchildren had attacked it with stones. Given this recent history it
is no surprise that it aggressively defended itself when approached and touched by the girl.
Of course I do not blame the girl
whose intentions were purely friendly but neither do I blame the dog. To me this story
highlights three points: that children need to be educated to be wary of
unknown dogs; that cruel treatment of dogs will produce an aggressive animal;
and that lazy journalism does not serve society well.
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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) |
Saturday, January 26, 2013
Dump Dogs And Aggression In Pakistan
The Pakistan Observer has a brief
report (here) about the ongoing problem of aggressive street dogs in Islamabad
and Rawalpindi. The residents complain that they feel frightened to walk the
streets, particularly at night, adding that the situation is “due to lack of
any action against the stray dogs by the civic authorities”.
In this story I can see the usual issues
of poor waste management supporting an increasing number of dogs plus the
normal attitude that the responsibility belongs to the authorities rather than
the residents themselves and perhaps also aggression from people producing
aggressive dogs.
However, one comment that particularly
caught my eye was from a resident who said that the dogs “are usually seen
around garbage heaps during the day”. Although living as scavengers around
human communities is in the nature of dogs, it struck me that part of the
problem in situations like this may be the separation between the animals and
the human residents. These are not village or community dogs, these are dump
dogs. They live close to people but probably do not have direct interaction
with people on a daily basis. Their reliance on people is indirect and the
relationship is impersonal unlike the traditional village situation where both
dogs and people know each other as individuals and are bonded through a shared
community.
Such understanding of why the human-dog
relationship starts to break down cannot in itself offer any immediate relief
to the residents of Islamabad or Rawalpindi but does help to create a better
picture of the free-living dog’s role in the world. This particularly concerns
me because of the danger that all free-living dogs are unfairly tainted by such
cases as these aggressive dump dogs in Pakistan.
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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) |
Friday, January 25, 2013
Dog Domestication And Diet
New research (reported here, for
example) has highlighted genetic differences between wolves and domestic dogs
that “may
suggest that the development of agriculture catalysed the domestication of
dogs”. The most interesting difference is the significant duplication in dogs of
genes that enable starch digestion which gives them a great advantage over
wolves in living on starch-rich rather than protein-rich diets. A change that
to some extent paralleled our own genetic adaption to agriculture.
The researchers conclude that “a change of ecological
niche could have been the driving force behind the domestication process, and
that scavenging in waste dumps near the increasingly common human settlements
during the dawn of the agricultural revolution may have constituted this new
niche”.
This seemingly adds weight to the idea that
humans did not deliberately create dogs from wolves as is commonly believed but
that it was a natural process in response to changes in an available niche,
which in turn, implies that unowned dogs scavenging food around the edge of
human communities are doing exactly what they evolved to do.
However, it seems to me that it is equally
possible that these genetic changes occurred after the dog had already
travelled well down the road to domestication. The changes in available food
would be a driver for these genetic changes even if the animals were already fully
domesticated. To be fair, the researchers are more tentative in their
conclusions than the popular media have been!
With the improvement of DNA
research techniques and a general lowering of their cost further similar
studies will probably provide more evidence on the question of dog
domestication before too long. But frustratingly for me, these studies always select
dog breeds as the comparison with
wolves rather than the free-living non-breeds such as the dingoes and pariahs
of Asia, which are probably the closest living relatives to the earliest dogs.
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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) |
Thursday, January 24, 2013
Street Dog Role Models in Romania
A campaign has started in
Romania using stray dogs as role models to try to reduce the number of
pedestrian casualties from careless road crossings (reported here, for example).
Many street dogs have apparently learned that the safest way to cross roads is
to use pedestrian crossings or wait for red lights, so they are being used as
examples to educate, and possibly embarrass, the general public.
This particularly interests me
because one of the commonest complaints against street dogs is the risk of them
causing traffic accidents but my feeling has always been that dogs who grew up
on the street are actually quite traffic-savvy whilst abandoned pets and
pets-on-the-loose are the far more serious culprits.
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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) |
Kathmandu's Street Dogs
This video presented by Charlotte
Uhlenbroek introduces the Kathmandu Animal Treatment Centre (KAT Centre) and
the work they are planning to improve the street dog situation in Nepal’s
capital.
I appreciate the fact that she
introduces the concept of “community dogs” and states that “they fair pretty
well” on the whole but feel that the overall message is a little misleading in
implying is that this community approach is a fairly new reaction to an
increasing population of street dogs rather than the long-standing human-dog
relationship in the area. Neither does her description actually address why the
population of street dogs has increased. Blaming “uncontrolled breeding” is an
inadequate explanation. Mentioning that the dogs “scavenge what they can from
piles of rubbish in the streets” suddenly creates a clearer picture of poor
waste management in an expanding urban centre leading to an increasing street
dog population which creates the ideal conditions for canine disease to
flourish. In other words, waste management is the problem not the dogs
themselves.
The desire to
improve the overall health of the canine population is commendable but the KAT
Centre’s project could ultimately end up with the loss of Kathmandu’s
traditional community street dogs whilst also inadvertently producing a greater
human health problem through more rotting waste or a higher rat population.
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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) |
Tuesday, January 22, 2013
ID Card for Stray Dog Carers
In an unprecedented move a Government
agency in India (Animal Welfare Board of India (AWBI)) is to issue identity
cards to people who voluntarily feed or care for street dogs (full report here). The aim is to
reduce or even eliminate the harrassment that such people get from those who
want rid of the dogs. The ID card will not give the holder any rights but will
instead state that they have the legal right to care and feed these animals and
that the AWBI supports this right.
I could imagine some suspicions
about the need for such carers to register personal details in order to get a
card but the linked report indicates that reaction so far has been very
positive (at least from animal rights groups). There is also scope for misunderstandings such as that carers require such an ID card, which is not the case.
Part of the reasoning for this ID card being a good thing is summed up with the quote: “Most people don’t realise that
sterilisation and vaccination of stray dogs would be possible only through
feeding and befriending dogs”. Organisers of any humanitarian stray dog
management initiative will find that such local carers are absolutely
invaluable.
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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) |
Monday, January 21, 2013
Stray Dogs Kill Five in Mexico?
Mexico City has had a real stray
dog horror story recently that has hit the major news channels as well as flooding
the internet. The story broke with the discovery of a woman and her baby plus a
teenage couple all apparently mauled to death and, at least in the one case,
partially eaten by “wild” dogs in a large, hilly park within the city. An
immediate round-up of loose dogs in the area was conducted and over 50 were
successfully trapped.
A few days later it was realised
that the case of another woman who had died in the park a week or two earlier
but had not been fully investigated was actually the first dog-mauling victim
bringing the total number of deaths to five.
The local reaction to these
events has been interesting. There have been strong protests about the fate of
the captured dogs, which included some puppies, with a general disbelief that
these dogs could have done such a thing. The tests for human blood and stomach
contents have subsequently all proved negative and rather than dispose of the
animals as may have been the original intention they are now being put up for
adoption whilst the chances of discovering the real culprits are diminishing
fast.
The other side to the reaction
has been suspicion that this was actually a human crime being blamed on the
dogs. The serious crime rates in the city, particularly related to drug gangs,
has produced a cynical reaction that perhaps the bodies were killed elsewhere
then dumped in the area and the dogs framed, and that this may have been done
with the complicity of the authorities. However, understandable as such a
reaction may be given the nature of life in the city, two things seem to point
to the dogs themselves being the culprits. The initial reports included
forensic evidence that clearly identified multiply bites as having occurred both
whilst the people were still alive and after death. This in itself doesn’t
discount the conspiracy theory but the teenage girl who died also rang her
sister during the attack and in crying for help stated that they were being
attacked by a pack of dogs. Unfortunately, the sister thought she was joking,
although, given the size of the park even if she had believed it there probably
wasn’t anything that could have been done at that stage.
Basically, although some people
will always have some doubts, I see no compelling evidence to suggest that
these five people died any other way than getting mauled to death by dogs in
the park.
As an aside, I find people’s disbelief
that the miserable, forlorn-looking dogs trapped in cages could have done
something so terrible to be a classic human reaction that dogs have evolved to
evoke in us. They are masters at deflecting human aggression, a trait that
probably naturally developed in the earliest dogs as a consequence of them
choosing to live near people. Neither of the other choices of fight or flight
would have been as successful.
Going back to the story in Mexico
City, there is another snippet of information that I find interesting but has
not been picked up elsewhere. Namely, that when the police first started rounding
up dogs in the area there was a mad scramble amongst the residents to make sure
their own pets were safely shut inside. Prior to this, allowing pets to wander
freely was the norm in the area. The assumption, of course, is that only wild
dogs could possibly do such a terrible thing and the thought of looking towards
the free-roaming pets never occurred to anybody. I would like to suggest that
possibly the reason that none of the rounded-up stray dogs had any evidence of
human blood on them or human tissue in their stomachs was that all that
evidence may have already have been safely shut away in peoples’ homes. I
cannot say with any confidence that local pet dogs were involved but I can say
that it is quite possible and should have been considered from the start. I, for one, would not be at all surprised.
Although I often argue in support
of free-living dogs I am under no illusion about their capabilities. Dogs are
designed to elicit sympathy in us but still retain the potential to cause harm
and, particularly in packs, to kill. To me, the idea of stray or feral dogs or
pets-on-the-loose killing people in this way is quite believable but is clearly
unusual and probably requires a particular set of circumstances in order to
happen but unfortunately the details from these deaths in Mexico are
frustratingly insufficient to gain any real understanding of what exactly happened.
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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) |
Saturday, January 19, 2013
On Meeting Stray Dogs
A mixture of good and bad advice
in this posting on Hubpages about what to do when meeting a stray dog.
Good advice:
Bad advice:
I guess the author is writing
from a western situation. If I were to follow her advice I would spend half my
life crouched on the ground with my hands over my head.
My advice when approached by a
potentially aggressive stray dog is to stand still and look the other way. Let it sniff your leg (and keep your
hands in your pocket).
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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) |
Thieving Stray Dog
According to a report on the BBC
News website (here) a man in India has filed a report with police that a stray
dog ran away with a bag containing 400,000 rupees (over $7,000) sent to him by
his son working in the middle east. The bag was on his bed at the time and he
had briefly gone outside to wash his face. When he returned he saw the dog
running away with his money and gave chase but couldn’t catch it. Part of the
money was later found in a nearby street but the rest is still missing.
The speculation is that the dog
thought the bag contained food but no details are given as to why the dog may
have thought so. I could imagine a leather bag being of interest to a dog but
the Hindustan Times (here) adds the detail that it was actually a polythene
bag. This bag may have previously contained food or even if it hadn’t so much
edible waste that is dumped on the streets is actually in polythene bags that
the dog may have simply learned to associate the smell of polythene with food.
Perhaps the moral of the story in this case is that society needs to be more
careful with waste disposal.
Stretching the imagination and being
a little cynical, two other possibilities come to mind. Perhaps the dog was not
stray but actually trained as a bag/money snatcher. I have never heard of this
happening with a dog but believe it has been done with monkeys and the
trainability of dogs would certainly make it possible.
However, part of me also
questions whether any dog was involved at all. In this case the victim seems
genuine with no motivation to lie and the fact that part of the money was
recovered in the street by the police supports his story but it wouldn’t be the
first time that a stray dog was framed for something it didn’t do.
Edit: A small but important detail to add from the Gulf News
(here). The man went out to wash his hands because he had just been eating.
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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) |
Thursday, January 17, 2013
Successful Protest to Protect School’s Stray Dogs
This seems to be an example of a
successful campaign by those who actually know the dogs to change an authority’s stray dog management intentions (full story here). The dean of a high
school in Taipei was going to indiscriminately round up all stray dogs
apparently for euthanasia but changed his tack after protests from both faculty
members and students.
Hopefully he has now learned that
many people actually value these dogs and a much better strategy is just to
tackle individual animals if they become a problem.
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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) |
Bishop Embroiled in Stray Dog Poisonings
A story from Chile (here)
highlights the fact that not everybody hates having stray or street dogs
around. Many people actually value them. The article covers the protests in
reaction to the killing of over 40 strays by poisoning. Such protests are quite
normal around the world but in this case there was the twist that the
protesters had an obvious target for their anger (even though they did not know
who did the actual poisoning), namely, a bishop who had earlier claimed that
“God allowed humans to eradicate stray dogs”. The bishop apparently made the
comments after he “was attacked by six dogs a few days earlier” and his words
are being blamed for the subsequent killings.
An interesting point to come from
this story is that not all the poisoned dogs were unowned street dogs; at least
five were pets later identified by their owners. Disappointingly, the animal
activists are still only blaming abandonment of pets for the high numbers of
dogs on the streets when the evidence in this case points in part to pets-on-the-loose.
I am convinced that these pets, which are socialised to people, are much more
aggressive to humans than dogs born on the streets. My suspicion, therefore, is
that the dogs that attacked the bishop, which led to his words condemning stray
dogs, which may have led to the poisonings, could well have actually been pet
dogs. In which case it would just be another example of street dogs getting
blamed for the deeds of pet dogs.
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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) |
Dream Pill for Stray Dog Control?
I have written before (here)
about the not-for-profit organisation, “600 Million Stray Dogs Need You”, who are
developing a one-time sterilisation pill for dogs with the apparent aim of producing
dog-free streets.
To quote myself:
“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.”
And I repeat my belief that not all unowned
dogs are stray and do not need to be dealt with.
Then I recently came across an article about
this campaign (here) that was interesting for the readers’ comments at the end
which showed some very strong feelings against the campaign that pleasantly surprised
me. Admittedly their reasons were different to mine (largely being worried
about the ease for misusing such a drug in various ways or possible
side-effects) but I welcome any resistance to this group unless they undergo a
radical change in attitude that is not simply going to happen.
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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) |
Monday, January 14, 2013
Health of Stray Dogs
A report about the abandonment of
pet dogs in Sunderland, UK (here), highlights one significant reason why people
dump their dogs: the dog is ill or injured and the owner cannot or will not pay
for treatment. Although this article was specifically about one city in England
this is probably a typical reason for abandoning pet dogs worldwide.
One of the commonest complaints
about street dogs in countries with sizable populations is that they are so
unhealthy and sorry-looking. In most urban areas the majority of street or
stray dogs have come from abandonments rather than dogs born on the streets (it
was estimated a few years ago, for example, that the street dog population of just over
100,000 in Bangkok was fuelled by around 40,000 annual abandonments). The
artificially high densities of dogs living on a relatively poor diet with little or no
healthcare produces ideal conditions for diseases and parasites to proliferate
particularly if the animals arrive already in an unhealthy condition.
The main reason I want to
highlight this is to compare this situation with the health of the free-living dogs
in rural or village areas. In my experience these village dogs are generally
much healthier than urban street dogs, which illustrates the fact that the
lifestyle of being independent and unowned does not in itself produce mangy,
flea-ridden dogs as many people seem to assume. Unfortunately, it is the
mangy, flea-ridden animals that get noticed, which re-enforces the attitude
that dogs need human owners and suffer a miserable life without one. The
miserable life they have to suffer is more due to the fact that they were once
owned and that ownership failed them.
Let’s put the blame for the poor
condition of urban stray dogs where it belongs: on irresponsible ownership not
the unowned lifestyle.
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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) |
Sunday, January 13, 2013
New Method to Estimate Stray Dog Numbers
Wildlife biologists in Mumbai,
India, have come up with a time-effective method to count stray dogs, which
avoids the need to artificially mark or even catch the strays thus reducing
stress to the animals and the risk of bites to the handlers (report here). It
uses the fact that many dogs have unique markings that allow them to be
individually recognised. As some dogs are relatively unmarked and hard to
identify individually then a proportion of the population is counted as
“unmarked” and a statistical technique used to arrive at an overall estimate
that can help in monitoring dog management strategies. This is an adaptation of
the standard “mark-recapture” technique commonly used to estimate wild animal
populations (now called “mark-resight”).
One problem with the method
is that many dogs are only part-time strays spending much of their time in
their owner’s home which can skew the results but anything that highlights this
part of the overall stray dog problem is good in my view.
On the other hand, another
benefit with this technique is that it avoids the common conflicts with local
residents some of whom do not like seeing “their” local street dogs caught whilst
others do not understand why the dogs have to be released again after being
caught. Photographing the dogs generally does not raise the hackles of either
side.
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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) |
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