Last week I attended part of the HSUS conference. One of the seminars I sat through was the Street Dogs in India, and the speaker gave us information on some fascinating research.
Street dogs in India are part of the lifestyle. In my opinion, these dogs should not be removed off the streets as they play a vital role in our and the environment's life. They act as scavangers and eat off human scraps. They help recycle waste, in turn keep true pests like rodents and roaches away.
As they struggle to find out the best method in which to care for these dogs, one of the "ancient" plans was to capture and remove by killing these dogs.
For one, dogs are territorial animals. They will find areas not occupied by other dogs, and will move into those areas. Here is what they found:
In 1860, they captured and killed 100 dogs a year. The in:
1964 - 160000 dogs were killed
1964 – 16000 killed
1985 – 30000 killed
1996 – 135 a day killed
As Albet Einstein defined Insanity: Insanity is to do the same thing over and over again and expect different results. The results were no different.... the number of dogs increased, and so did the number of dogs carrying Rabies. The difference would have show a decreased number of dogs on the streets.
Today, many parts of India have capture - Spay/Neuter - Release projects. These projects have allowed for dogs to continue coexisting with their counterpart humans, as well as controlling the rate at which dogs populate.
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