Does Your Stray Dog Love Threatening Your Own Existence?

Stray dogs are becoming a big health hazard for the common people of India in the recent years. Their population is increasing geometrically as the time passes.

Dogs are the first among to get domesticated by the humans. Dogs as we encounter now are no more wild animals. They have the most desirable qualities among animals to be loved and cared by people. They are too loyal to their masters. Under normal circumstances they do no harm to the people who become friendly with them and take care of them.

Stray dogs are the breeds that have no specific human masters. Some irresponsible humans are the real cause for stray dogs. Domesticated dogs become stray when the human owners discard them and no more take care of them.

Some people do feed dogs and allow them to multiply. But they do not like to take the responsibility of keeping these animals well disciplined and trained under them. The neglected dogs escape to the streets to become stray dogs with no individual masters. When people feed them with waste food and other things, the population of these dogs increase. Since they do not have any human masters now, they slowly acquire their wild natures.

In almost all developed nations, there are rules and laws for people who keep animals like cats, dogs and the like in their residences and in their farms. The essential principle of these laws are to safeguard others from any possible threats from these animals.

So, if you are an animal keeper, you are primarily responsible for any damage or problem your pet might likely do to any other person or persons.

India too has such civic laws in place. But unfortunately, Indian laws and rules do not get implemented uniformly everywhere. It depends much on the whims and fancies of the enforcement authorities!

Some decades ago, there used to be a category of civic employees who are called 'dog catchers' whose job was to catch stray dogs within their jurisdictional areas. If there is an owner the owner used to be fined if a dog is caught wandering in public. If the dogs are found wandering as street animals, they used to be caught and destroyed by appropriate methods.

Of late, things have changed. As food security enhanced and living conditions improved among people, some intellectuals got more time to think about their animal cousins rather than their human cousins. They have become more and more compassionate to the former that they became social reformers whose efforts culminated in the enactment of laws that all of a sudden placed the animals above the humans! 

In the world today, there are more animal lovers than human lovers!

I am not implying that we should do injustice to the animals or even plants. But any law which is made without proper application of human wisdom would do more harm than good! Often our own lack of wisdom causes threats to our own lives!

How do you feel when the authority or authorities you approached for help and protection, while fully acknowledging your fears, express their inability to extent any help to you because of the existence of some idiotic rules and clauses that exist in a law that got passed by some ignorant law makers some decades ago? 

Not only you, any one in your position would feel as betrayed. Betrayed by a system that you have been thinking and hoping as one for the overall benefit of the human race that live in your part of the globe!

Some time ago I wrote a blog article in this forum titled: 

Stray Dog Menace in India-A Curse Inflicted Upon Indians By Meddling Bureaucracy, Insensitive Politicians and Pseudopetans!

Much of what I wanted to say on the growing menace of stray dogs in this country have been written in that.

I thought of writing about it again because of a breaking news item that I happen to view in one of the Malayalam News channels which reported the horror of stray dogs in some part of Kerala. The news reported groups of stray dogs killing domestic animals, attacking humans and the horror of rising rabies incidences in the recent years. A lady village panchayat president of one of the worst affected villages have been shown as expressing her inability to do any thing to kill these stray dogs because of the provisions of a national law. Yes, obviously she was referring to the infamous or famous Indian law: Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act 1960 as amended as Act 26 of 1982 and thereafter.

Anyone who kills or takes practical actions to eradicate the menace of stray dogs by killing them is likely to get arrested, punished and imprisoned by the application of certain provisions of this central law.

So, which state authority has the courage to violate such an act by taking actions to control stray dogs only to be accused as causing cruelty to animals? The law is after all above every thing and it has no eyes and ears (means it does not work on logical reasoning, but on mechanical interpretation of the statutes!)

To add to the complexities, there are growing numbers of shrewd fellows who are all willing to make any non-issue a big issue! The so-called animal lovers and human haters come in that group. I have called them the pseudo-petans. ( 'Peta' is the acronym for 'people for the ethical treatment of animals'). 

The illustrious media men and women who are compelled by their bosses to find sensational news items every day makes things worse. One day they lament the problem of stray dog menace while on the other day they shed tears for the same dogs getting starved or murdered!

In reality, there are always a group of  people who wish to come to the limelight using the modern media. They try to invoke human sentiments for various reasons including cheap publicity for achieving some larger vested interests. 

Will these Petans keep all the stray dogs in their homes? The law has caused the pet keepers to push their old, sick and unwanted animals to the streets or abandoning their pets when they are not in a position to keep and love them. If they kill their sick pets, they would be doing a serious offense. By abandoning their animals to the streets, they would be doing a lesser offense and would not be noticed. So many individual dog keepers adopt the latter method in India.

Then some other animal lovers feed these stray dogs with their waste food. Not because they love them, but because they do not have any civic authorities and facilities to dispose their wastes.

That causes the dogs to breed in the streets uncontrollably. Facing no natural threats, they keep breeding to become a nuisance to the public. When food become scarce, they attack other animals and even children. Lonely pedestrians and children become prey to these menacing canines.

The number of people bitten by stray dogs are increasing in India now. The city of Mumbai had over 82000 stray dog bite cases in 2012 and over 50% of the victims were children. The sterilization efforts of the Mumbai Municipal Corporation did not solve the stray dog menace, according to reports. Since the Maharashtra government has recently decided to  become tough with its anti cow slaughter and anti beef eating law, the Mumbai street dogs would likely feast on stray bovines in the coming days! Mumbai Petans can now rejoice and weep over this development, simultaneously!

Whether they rejoice or weep, all these things are good news for the pharmaceutical conglomerates that make the anti-rabies vaccines. The demand for these vaccines are on the rise. So also its costs. It is no longer affordable to the common people of India! One Delhi private hospital reportedly charged Rs.40,000/- for a dose of the anti-rabies vaccine!

The municipal corporation of the city where I live have recently arranged a team to catch some 20 dogs from the locality where I live. My locality in this state capital is a gated community having an area of about 0.5 square kilometers. We estimate the present population of stray dogs within this residential enclosure at about 150. 

The team performed the control measures as allowed as per the law and carefully transported those bleeding canines back and released them to the same area from where they were trapped, ensuring the so-called humane approach. Can any one be thought of so clever and efficient in trapping all the stray dogs and subject them to the legally admissible control measures? At least in this context, the stray dogs are cleverer than their human cousins!

You can well imagine the effectiveness of this legally admissible humane measure of canine control!

Some one asked me to give my suggestions also for the problems that I write in these blogs.

To them I tell this. My dear friend! I have no suggestions.

Everyone around has a better brain than me. They can find solutions if they think. I am writing these for  people to think.

Our real problem is when we refuse to think!