Stray dogs: Why the canine conundrum?

India Today

a day ago

(NOTE: This article was originally published in the India Today issue dated November 14, 2022)For Noida-based homemaker Uma Sharma, 49, feeding the six stray dogs outside her home was a way to cope with the death of her husband four years ago. Without their love and loyalty, she would have gone into depression. Regretfully, members of her housing society did not share her love of dogs. A year ago, when Sharma was away on vacation, they picked up four of the six dogs and relocated them without her knowledge.advertisement'It broke my heart,' she says. 'I had to go in for therapy to get over the trauma. The dogs had never bitten or attacked anyone. They had been vaccinated. But due to the prejudices of some people, they paid a hefty price.' Despite finding out where the dogs had been shifted, she wasn't able to locate them. Being territorial, introducing dogs to a new area often results in their death as new packs have trouble accepting an outsider.Feeding stray dogs has been an age-old bone of contention between animal lovers and their opposers. Recently, it has been exacerbated by the rise in street dog attacks across India, triggering a public panic of sorts. In October, a three-year-old girl was killed in the Patnagarh block of Odisha's Balangir district. In September, the video of a 12-year-old boy being attacked by a stray dog in front of his house in Kerala's Kozhikode district went viral on social media. In April, a pack of stray dogs attacked two children—aged 7 and 5—in Lucknow's Musahabganj area, killing one and badly injuring the other.
While the debate over attacks by stray dogs and what to do about it rages, there is equal venting and angst on the treatment being meted out to the animals, particularly in metros. Sharma, for instance, has filed a police case against the society members for cruelty. 'They are forbidden by law to touch the other two dogs,' she says, adding that not just her but many children and the society guards for whom the dogs provided much-needed company felt the loss as acutely. 'As long as they are not harming someone, why should we focus on getting rid of them?'It is a question many are asking in light of the recent Bombay High Court judgment that imposes a penalty on those feeding stray dogs outside houses in Nagpur. Nearly 1,500 feeders held a silent protest against the decision at Mumbai's Shivaji Park on October 30. Their major objection is that the onus is being put on feeders instead of the local civic bodies to improve sterilisation programmes for better population control. Dog feeders, say animal experts, should not be the ones to shoulder the blame.'Feeders are doing a great service as the street dogs become more accessible to animal welfare organisations and municipal authorities to catch for sterilisation and also for re-vaccinations against rabies. Blaming feeders doesn't make sense. You say 'stop feeding dogs' and they will just disappear into thin air? It may work the other way. A dog that is well-fed is likely to be more at ease than a hungry dog. There needs to be a balance between human interest and the welfare of street dogs at large,' says Abodh Aras, CEO, The Welfare of Stray Dogs, Mumbai.advertisementThose who are fighting against feeding strays say that there should be someone to take responsibility for the dogs should they attack another person or pet dog. 'I am an animal lover myself,' says 35-year-old Sonali Batra, a homemaker from Pune. 'But I don't feed dogs outside because I cannot take responsibility for them.' Most feeders, however, are unwilling to take the responsibility. For example, Vanya Jha, a Bhopal-based lawyer who regularly feeds strays, says, 'I would help in treatment if there is a dog bite but not as an obligation, unless the stray has been fully adopted by me, in which case it would not be a stray. In any case, strays are usually fed not by just one person or family, so one person cannot be expected to take up such a responsibility.'advertisementLegally, everyone has the right to provide food and care for starving animals. In 2021, the Delhi High Court held that '...animals have a right to live with respect and dignity'. The court further declared that 'it shall be the duty and responsibility of the RWA (residents' welfare association) or municipal corporation and all government authorities, including enforcement authorities like police, to provide all assistance and ensure that no hindrance is caused to the caregivers or feeders of community animals'. The Supreme Court also upheld the judgment in its May 19, 2022, order.In 2014, the apex court had also ruled that any restriction on the feeding of community animals or their removal or any cruelty inflicted on them would be in direct violation of their right to live with dignity. Yet, feeders often find themselves and the dogs they look after at the receiving end of the stick. 'I have been abused and yelled at publicly by male members in the society for feeding the dogs. I have been threatened that if the dog harms anyone, they will beat me up. But I stand my ground against such bullies. These are the same people who will berate others for harming the society and then will burst firecrackers and litter the streets with toxic waste that is far more harmful than a dog,' says 28-year-old Aditi Chaturvedi, an MBA student in Noida who feeds nine stray dogs outside her PG accommodation.advertisementThose who have been working with stray dogs, such as Kartick Satyanarayan, executive member of Delhi-based NGO Friendicoes, say the solution cannot be found if the responsibility is to be put only on feeders. 'If we find ourselves living next to someone we dislike, do we constantly go and harass them till they move away? The answer is to coexist and find ways to do so,' he says. The first thing to really consider, Satyanarayan adds, is the fact that India has one of the most successful stray dog control programmes in the world.'Municipalities and NGOs work to sterilise dogs, which has reduced the number on the streets already. These dogs are also vaccinated and by law are returned to the place they were taken from,' he says. In Delhi, for example, the municipal corporation has an app where you can request a local dog to be sterilised and even track its surgery and date of release data. Roughly 40,000 dogs are being sterilised annually in south Delhi alone. 'The idea is not to kill off the entire feral dog population but to ensure there is no population explosion,' says Satyanarayan.advertisementA population explosion?In 2021, the State of Pet Homelessness Index data for India estimated the country has around 62 million stray dogs, with 77 per cent saying they see a stray dog at least once a week. This is a dog-to-human ratio of nearly five dogs for 100 people, which is still above the World Organization for Animal Health-recommended three dogs for 100 people. Figures tabled in the Lok Sabha this year were more conservative, pegging the number of homeless dogs in the country at 17.1 million. They also noted an all-India decline of 10 per cent from 2012 to 2019.The decrease was the sharpest in Uttar Pradesh where numbers reduced by half from 4.2 million in 2012 to 2.1 million in 2019. The highest rise was in Karnataka, followed by Rajasthan. In the livestock census in 2019, Manipur and Dadra & Nagar Haveli were declared stray dog-free. 'Dogs don't live for very long on the streets—about six years on average—because it is the survival of the fittest and older dogs get pushed out or don't get enough food. Pups, too, rarely make it to adulthood, with only one or two in every litter surviving. So, it is a mistaken belief that we are facing a street dog population explosion,' says Satyanarayan.Experts say it is important that states where the sterilisation programme isn't yielding enough results step up their efforts for better population control. These include Odisha, Gujarat, Maharashtra, Chhattisgarh, Haryana, Kerala and the Union territory of Jammu and Kashmir, where numbers rose between 2012 and 2019, according to the same Lok Sabha report. 'Wherever animal birth control rules are implemented, you won't have issues of stray dogs attacking humans. There has to be a consistent sterilisation programme that breaks the whole pack code behaviour,' says Aras.The Animal Welfare Board of India, the central government's apex body on animal welfare, has written to all states asking them to comply with rules by having an active sterilisation programme in place. 'When dogs are unsterilised, fights between them may occur, and rarely, a human may get caught in the middle. An effective sterilisation programme helps prevent such situations. Since territories are not left vacant, new dogs cannot enter. Over time, as the dogs die natural deaths, their numbers dwindle. The dog population becomes stable, non-breeding, non-aggressive and rabies-free, and it gradually decreases over time,' says Meet Ashar, manager of cruelty response projects, PETA India.Sterilisation also helps dismantle the alpha dog mentality of a pack as hormones that drive males to compete over a female or territory are no longer present. 'Sterilised, vaccinated, and well-fed and cared-for community dogs also prevent unsterilised, unvaccinated and unfamiliar dogs from entering their territory. This stabilises the community dog population of the neighbourhood,' adds Ashar.But sterilising street dogs is not always an easy task. Catching them remains a challenge for many municipalities as dogs run away or attack strangers. 'Sometimes, it is dog lovers who resist the animals being taken for neutering. They want to know where the dog is being taken and when it would be back. More awareness is needed to tell people that it's best for the future of stray dogs that they are neutered,' says Dr Umesh Bhaskar, a veterinarian with Navodaya, the agency neutering dogs in Bhopal municipal limits.The Animal Birth Control (Dogs) Rules, 2001, state that after neutering, the dogs must be released in the same place from where they were taken. But some municipalities have faced threats from societies when it was time to return the dogs. 'We have to fight to collect the dogs and sometimes we have to fight to release them because not everyone wants them back. The country is divided over street dogs and this love-hate divide often gets in the way of our work,' says a Delhi municipality member.In some cities, civic bodies have realised that working with feeders leads to better results. Mumbai is one such example where feeders help capture the dogs and ensure that all dogs under their care are vaccinated and sterilised. The Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC), in turn, has set aside Rs 4 crore for its sterilisation budget in 2022-2023 and feeders say the process has always been smooth.'Everyone sees stray dogs as a nuisance and wants them to be taken away from their premises. Coexistence is important; dogs are a part of our ecosystem. The population of stray dogs needs to be brought to a figure that is well accepted by the human population of the region, to pre-empt any conflict. If stray dogs live in healthy and sanitary conditions and don't suffer from ailments and illnesses, the conflict and problems are reduced,' says Dr Kalimpasha Pathan, general manager at the BMC's veterinary health department. As of September this year, the municipal body has sterilised 386,347 dogs and is planning to start a programme that is expected to see 100,000 rabies vaccinations in a year.With around 20,000 deaths annually, India accounts for 36 per cent of the world's rabies deaths, according to the World Health Organization. And dog bites cause almost all cases of rabies in the country. However, according to the Union ministry of health and family welfare, India has recorded a drop of over 60 per cent in the number of rabies deaths year on year from 2011 to 2018 (except 2017). Now, a mandatory shot is given to all stray dogs that are brought in for sterilisation.Coexisting with straysThe data tabled by the Union minister for fisheries and animal husbandry in the Lok Sabha this year shows stray dog bites across India have reduced to 1.7 million in 2021 from 7.3 million in 2019. However, 1.45 million cases have already been reported from January 1 to July 22, 2022, indicating that the sharp drop in 2021 might have been due to Covid restrictions and fewer people out on the streets. But even at 1.45 million bites over six months, the figure this year may still be less than the 7.3 million cases in 2019. And sterilisation doesn't rule out all chances of a dog biting.Experts say biting or attacking is a dog's defence mechanism and while a sterilised dog won't attack unprovoked, it will defend itself if faced with a threat. The Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act, 1960, defines acts that amount to cruelty to animals and makes them punishable. These include 'beating, kicking, killing, mutilating or otherwise torturing any animal so as to cause them unnecessary pain or suffering'. 'Mischief by killing or maiming' an animal also violates Sections 428 and 429 of the Indian Penal Code.One of the ways to reduce people's antagonism towards street dogs is to focus on what they do for us, say experts. Besides valuable companionship to many, dogs also help keep spaces safe at night. They are also our biological cleansers of trash, rats and other pests.An example of coexistence is Sunil Kuttam and the 45-odd dogs he looks after in Delhi's Kalkaji Extension area. All the dogs are vaccinated and the respective RWAs have their certificates. Kuttam and his team help introduce new maids, drivers and couriers to the dogs to help build confidence and trust between both canine and human. If there is an aggressive dog, medicines to reduce anxiety and aggression are mixed into its food.It is also important for people to know that the number of stray dog bites is not as much as believed and neither are strays becoming more aggressive. According to General Hospital, Ernakulam, Kerala, companion dogs, not strays, were the cause of 75.6 per cent of the bite cases in a six-month period in 2015. 'Eating meat and being fed do not make a dog aggressive. It is an absolute myth. On the contrary, a well-fed dog is likely to be more trusting and less aggressive,' says Satyanarayan.The BMC is working towards countering misapprehensions through education programmes in municipal schools with plans to introduce them in private schools. 'Touching a dog that you don't know, picking up puppies with a mother around, throwing a stone, touching the animal while it is eating and pulling its tail should be avoided. If a dog is chasing, don't run. You need to make children aware. Often, societies say that dogs may bite, so we shouldn't have them. I try to make them aware on how not to get bitten,' says Aras.In developed countries, street dog populations are controlled not just through sterilisation programmes but also by providing homeless animals shelters and parks. The Noida Authority is taking some lessons from the US and is planning to build 18 shelter homes for dogs in the city with the help of RWAs. Run by the RWAs, they will provide a place for homeless dogs to stay and be treated for illness. There is also a dog park being built in Sector 135.It is important that we find a balance between dog lovers and those who are yet to be comfortable with them. Those with dog phobias say their fears should also be respected. 'I went through a horrible situation with a gang of dogs as a child. I cannot be near dogs without feeling very sick. I am not saying kill street dogs but at least leave areas where a person can be without having to face them,' says 19-year-old Mumbai-based student Akshay Narain.Dog experts say that this can be done if feeding is done in only one part of the society so that the dogs' area is confined to that space. Multiple feeders in the same society with multiple locations trains dogs to roam the entire society instead of a part of it.Street dogs are valuable to many, even as they are frightening to others. Sensitisation on the value of dogs and how to behave around them, sterilisation to control numbers and pack aggressiveness and feeding homeless dogs in planned public spaces can serve as the foundation of such a balance.—With Rahul Naronha, Rohit Parihar and Manish DixitSubscribe to India Today Magazine- EndsTune InMust Watch