The Supreme Court of India, some time ago, made very strong comments against those who treat dogs cruelly and passed an order stating that even street dogs should be treated well and there must be methods of looking after them. However, the court’s recent order to the administrations of the state and the corporation of Delhi that all street dogs, numbering about three lakhs, should be housed in shelters in the limits of the corporation and looked after, these to be done within eight weeks is amusing. Some dog lovers felt very happy about the order, however, some others said that it was an impossible task to be completed in eight weeks. Subsequently, the Supreme Court changed its own verdict and directed that the dogs be neutered and sent back to the places where they came from.
I had had different types of dogs whom I looked after with great care, one of them lived with me for over thirteen years and died at my legs. I did keep different species like Alsatian. Pomeranian, Dachshund and also common dogs. When I was the Honorary Wildlife Warden for South Kanara, animals were brought to me to be looked after. They also included street dogs. Once the forest department sent me a panther cub with a broken leg to be looked after, which I did and sent it back to the forest department, once it was about three months old, recovered fully and started scratching my children while at play. There were plenty of occasions when my students and I had to save snakes including those which were poisonous from different houses and places, kept them for some days and left them in the forests.
I have written those details in the previous paragraph only to assure the reader that I have an equal interest in animal welfare as much as I have interest in human welfare. Delhi itself has more than three lakhs of street dogs and one wonders how the Supreme Court order can be implemented.
The pertinent question here is primarily about what should be done with street dogs. Near my house there was only one female dog which multiplied and became eleven in two years’ time and some of them would bark at me when I walked by their self-declared possession area. So, I contacted the authorities, their dog trappers came, they could only catch one of the younger ones and the next time I called, they said they had plenty of other places to go from where other people had called them. I was sure dog trappers are not an easy solution because the dogs will not only outnumber them but also manipulate to escape very easily.
What is the solution for avoiding street dogs?
The idea of catching them and neutering them and leaving them back is a herculean job, including methods of catching them as they are experts at escaping. Dog lovers who feed leftovers or even buy biscuits and other stuff and feed them may have to be banned first, so that they will not encourage their population growth. If someone is a great dog lover, let him or her adopt one or more and keep at home to feed it or them. There are countries like Zambia where Impalas eat all the grass and green leaves, both in the countryside and forests, and therefore, permission is granted to people to kill them and eat their meat so that their population will be kept under control. In Zimbabwe, two hundred and fifty elephants were killed recently because they went beyond their expected population and as they did not have enough food to eat. Even in Australia where the Kangaroo is the national animal, it is allowed to be killed through a new legislation as their numbers have gone beyond their keeping. There are countries where dog meat is eaten. Stray dogs after they are examined and found healthy could be exported to such countries where their meat is edible as per law. One of the best suggestions could be that the street dogs could be darted and examined to see if they are healthy and sent to the deep forests to live there or to become food for wild animals. This will also help the wild animals getting out and attacking human habitations. After all, the laws preventing cruelty to animals do not ban killing of animals, this would disallow human consumption and it only asks people to avoid cruelty to animals. PCA states that killing in itself is not a cruelty, but even the killing has to be without cruelty even including killing for consumption of meat.
Sending healthy street dogs to the deep forests is the simplest solution to not only avoiding them in the streets but also feeding the wild in the forest by allowing the natural process of animal and human living by not only consumption but also preservation.
It may interest the reader to know that in a country like the US, where such research and data collection is possible as it has progressed to do the research and has the money to do it, research findings point out that cat predation kills sixty-four million birds every year. It may be more interesting to know, this is from the publication Nature Scientific Report, that in the Thar Desert, around four and half thousand birds are killed per an area of thousand square kilometers and that too very cruelly, sometimes even falling on the ground and remaining there for hours before it dies. The wind turbines are spread in about three thousand square kilometers and one can wonder how many birds would die a cruel death. Dog lovers need not be bird lovers, indeed one wonders whether it is love of animals at all. While one appreciates the love of dogs, one also has to have love for those who get bitten and die of rabies which is many times crueler.
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Prof. Sunney Tharappan, is Director of College for Leadership and HRD, Mangaluru. He trains and writes and lives in Mangaluru. Email: tharappans@gmail.com