Bangkok Governor Candidates and Stray Dogs

With the Bangkok Governor election just a few weeks away, the candidates are all busy outlining their policies and making lots of promises. One key issue in the city is the stray dogs, which according to the chairman of the Foundation for Stray Dogs (FSD) have now reached over 700,000.

Several of the main candidates recently outlined how they would tackle the problem at a seminar organised by FSD. The report I saw (here) is very brief but all the prospective Governors talked about the need for more shelters with each of them adding their own twist, such as “the smart ones could be trained to work as guide dogs for blind people”.

According to the report only one candidate hinted at the root cause of the problem by saying that he “would encourage dog owners to take good care of their pets and not abandon them”. This abandonment of pets and unsold puppies is the major source of Bangkok’s street dogs rather than breeding on the streets, and it’s a little disappointing that it wasn’t given greater emphasis by the candidates (although perhaps not surprising as they wouldn’t want to appear critical of dog owners).

One candidate talked about “finding new homes for them, with the help of civil society” in order to save the state funds used in shelters. I’m not entirely sure what he has in mind but to me this is exactly what happens to most of the dogs anyway. There are thousands of people in the city who take it upon themselves to care for and feed the dogs in the traditional Thai manner, in return gaining companionship, gratitude and a communal security alert.

With such vague policies and apparent lack of clear understanding of the problem I suspect that whoever ends up as the next Governor of Bangkok the abandonment of dogs will continue and the stray dog population will carry on increasing. 

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)