Are
stray dogs a problem?
"
In India there are 35m strays and the country accounts for 35% of worldwide
deaths from rabies."
कृपया हा लेख वाचा , म्हणजे कळेल.
Clearly,
the situation is getting out of hand
The statistics are simply astounding. According to
Who, in 2011 there were more than 200m stray dogs worldwide. A mere seven years
later, in 2018, CARO (Companion Animal Responsible Ownership) reports that this
figure has increased by a staggering 240% to reach 480m! Could this be a
contributory factor in sending 815m humans to bed hungry every night?
Unsurprisingly the stray problem is worse in poorer countries
where dog ownership is not taken seriously and pets are abandoned to
proliferate unchecked in the wild. For example, Bali has a population of
500,000 strays. In India there are 35m strays and the country accounts for 35%
of worldwide deaths from rabies. In the Philippines there are 11.6m strays, and
rabies is rampant. Presently the Filipino authorities are running a vast
vaccination programme aimed at getting rid of this scourge island by island.
However there are well over 7000 islands which are inhabited by humans; so we
can imagine the enormity of the job.
Proliferation
In common with other canines, dogs
tend to procreate at a phenomenal rate. In 2016 the Ministry of Agriculture
estimated the number of strays to be 80k. In 2018, PAWS reckons the number is
200-300k and “the situation is
already out of control.” From personal observation, I think
the figure is nearer 600k. We simply have to do the maths. Normally a bitch can
give birth to an average 5 puppies every 6-months. So assuming that the female
population was 50pc of the total in 2016 and they had two litters in the meantime,
that would add an additional 400k strays in one year.
Five years ago, there were about
half a dozen strays living on Butte à l’Herbe beach — a lovely sandy spot with
shallow warm water that makes it the ideal place for a family picnic. Last
week, on a visit to my friend Keshraj, we saw that number had ballooned to
about 25 dogs of assorted ages — from weeks-old puppies to pubescent youngsters
and older mums, dads and grandparents. Unfortunately they tend to congregate
near the washrooms, so you venture to spend your proverbial penny at your risk
and peril. They are so dangerous that Keshraj and his wife have stopped taking
their morning stroll on the beach for fear of being attacked by these
uninoculated, disease-ridden, vicious packs of vermins.
Disease
Dogs are known to be prime vectors
of serious diseases, some of them deadly. Perhaps the most serious is rabies.
It is incurable and therefore fatal. When a human gets bitten by a rabid dog,
he automatically contracts the disease. And suffers from horrible symptoms such
damage to the central nervous system, encephalitis and hydrophobia, i.e. a fear
of water. Just imagine having this morbid fear of swallowing your own saliva to
moisten your parched throat and you get a measure of the awfulness of this
disease. Death invariably follows within days of the onset of symptoms.
Worldwide 55,000 people die from rabies while 15m others are given treatment in
the form of inoculation to avert the disease.
Other diseases that dogs may
transmit to humans include Toxocariasis, Lyme disease, Campylobacter infection,
Rocky Mountain fever and a host of worm infestations. Although none of these
are immediately life threatening, all of them can cause serious malaise in the
infected person.
Of course some of these diseases
are more serious than others. Take Dirofilariasis that is caused by roundworms.
It can cause heart disease in dogs. When passed on to humans, it can result in
painful subcutaneous lumps that have to be removed surgically. It can also
cause severe lesions in the lungs leading to difficulty in breathing and other
debilitating symptoms as result of insufficient intake of air and oxygen.
Roundworms can also cause
Toxocariasis. This is caused by a particular parasitic roundworm that resides
in the intestines of dogs. So when our cuddly pet dog defecates in our garden,
the eggs of the worm gets deposited in the soil where we grow our fruits and
veg and where our kids play. You can imagine the rest. When we accidentally
ingest the contaminated soil or salads grown on it, the eggs hatch in our
digestive tract and cause an infection that is aptly known as Visceral Larva
Migrans. From the intestines the larva can migrate to other organs including
the eye and cause Toxocariasis, which can lead to irreversible
blindness. I wonder how many loving parents realise that their cherished
pet dog can cause them and their children to go blind.
The Problem
There is no doubt that stray dogs
pause a serious problem to public health in Mauritius. Unfortunately statistics
about dog attacks are hard to find, but we all know of someone who has had the
misfortune of being a victim. On the other hand, many cases go unreported,
particular when the guilty canine is the undeclared, uninoculated pet (that’s
most owned dogs!) of a friend or a neighbour. Other victims are happy to
receive a cash compensation from the owner before proceeding to the medical
centre for their Tetanus/other jab. But there is no one responsible for attacks
by strays; so who to hold responsible? The short answer is the Mauritian
citizen.
Having lived in Europe for much of
his life, my friend Keshraj says he cannot remember having ever been confronted
by a stray dog. If there was a stray problem there in the past, they managed to
rid themselves of it a long time ago. But the task is far from easy. According
to Patti Strand, founder member of NAIA (National Animal Interest Alliance,
USA) which is an NGO dedicated to promote high standards of animal care and
treatment, it took the USA 150 years to get its stray problem under control.
Given the small size of Mauritius,
it should not take all that long. But badgered by assorted lobbies run by
thoughtless do-gooders for the safety of the human population, Government has
capitulated (not to say abdicated) and failed to deal aggressively with the
stray problem over the years.
Solutions
Up to now the normal practice has
been for Mauritius Society for Animal Welfare (MSAW) to capture the dogs and
euthanize them at their dog compound. But one solitary man with a small net can
only catch one dog at a time. Unfortunately the other members of the pack do
not wait in a line for their turn! The efforts of humane NGOs must be admired,
but ultimately destined to failure not only due to the sheer numbers but also
due to the irresponsibility of Mauritian citizens who think nothing of
abandoning little pups in the wild. These eventually grow and multiply to add
further to the stray problem. As pointed out earlier, even PAWS reckons that
the situation is out of control.
Given the huge number of strays,
every measure — vaccination, neutering, spaying, catching — undertaken so far
has been an abject failure. So the one and only solution seems to be culling.
Sure there will be protests from well-meaning local and Western NGOs. But then
their countries are not flooded with strays.
As Patti Strand points out, culling
sparks “sensational headlines and searing criticisms in the
West” but this is only because they are ignorant of the realities of the
Third world where control is often a matter of human survival. She
agrees that “it is sad that stray dogs have to be killed, but any
attempt to apply American no-kill philosophy to parts of the world where dogs
are suffering as well as threatening human life is unrealistic and
harmful.” And she is not alone but, as usual, the
vociferous minority gets the attention of a compliant media!
Finally I leave the reader with the
words of Gandhiji who is perhaps the greatest proponent of non-violence.
Writing in Young India in
1926, he had this to say:
“A roving dog without an owner is a
danger to society and a swarm of them is a menace to its very existence… If we
want to keep dogs in towns or villages in a decent manner, no dog should be
suffered to wander. There should be no stray dogs even as we have no stray
cattle…
“But can we take individual charge
of these roving dogs? Can we have a pinjrapole for them? If both these things
are impossible, then there seems to me no alternative except to kill them.”
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