Time to put the leash on irresponsible pet owners

Dog lovers who refuse to take responsibility have turned man’s best friend into a growling neighbourhood menace

FirstPost, 5 May, 2013

Salespersons are not allowed in my walled, gated housing complex. Even the regular service boys and helps who come in daily need to be verified by the guards and checked with specific apartment owners over intercom. I need to put in a formal request when my guests have to park their cars overnight. There are security booths at the three main entrances and on the ground floor of every building block.

But for one species, such fortification means nothing. Dogs are everywhere. Besides the fancy poop-machines on leashes, mongrels of all dispositions have colonised the lawns, the basement parking lot, everywhere.

On most nights, they create a ruckus loud enough to give the old and the sick nightmares. Getty Images

On most nights, they create a ruckus loud enough to give the old and the sick nightmares. Every other day, they aggressively charge morning and evening walkers. The security staff’s biggest challenge is to stop them from climbing the stairs at night to raid the garbage bins left outside the doors for collection in the morning.

The highly-active RWAs are helpless. So are the guards. There are a few residents who feed these packs twice a day. They have warned the rest with dire consequences if any attempt is made to evict the dogs. I have not tried to reason with them yet. In my experience, most dog lovers are rabidly so.

My family’s last dog died when I was eight. I was inseparable from Bon, a stout black mongrel, and even rode her as a toddler. Mostly dignified and happy, once she lost her cool when I innocently tugged at her tail when she was busy eating. She did not sink her canines in me but refused to eat for the next two days as I indignantly ignored her.  My uncle made me feed her and soon she was wagging her tail, following me around.

It was emotionally draining for the family when Bon died. Her last two years were sad. She slumped tiredly most of the time and started smelling different. After her death, we stopped keeping dogs. It was a wise decision.

I have never been tempted to keep a dog or to feed strays since. The idea of a dog boxed inside an apartment for 15 hours or more with no one around repulses me. Yet, all around, I see well-fed mongrels turning into pets by all means except that their owners never take them home.

I have nothing against pets or compassion per se. But I do not understand pet owners who are eager to adopt dogs but hardly bother to look after them. Such pet owners, and they are the majority, are responsible for creating a situation where dogs have become a public nuisance, a serious threat to public safety, health and environment.

A pet or abandoned pet is more fearful of people than strays are. Close to its owner’s house, such a dog is always territorial and protective. So, pets account for most dog bites.  Most of us have been chased by street dogs one time or the other. But were they really strays?

While most dog lovers feed strays in their neighbourhood, I know people who carry food for street dogs outside their offices. Regular feeding by a particular person at a particular place has the effect of petting on stray dogs, making them territorial and aggressive.

The result is scary. Two years ago, when an 18-month-old boy was killed, people in Bangalore launched a campaign to kill the apparently murderous pack. Such attacks, particularly on children, have not stopped. In January this year, a six-year-old was mauled in Bangalore. In February, two children were killed in Punjab’s Moga and Jalandhar. In March, a four-year-old suffered critical injury in Nagpur. Two weeks ago, a Mumbai pack injured 15, including a 40-year-old, in a single incident.

While attacks often make headlines, alarming rabies figures are rarely mentioned, perhaps given the popular sentiment. In India, dogs are responsible for more than 20 lakh bites and 30,000 deaths every year. In leopard-prone areas, they serve as live baits and aggravate man-animal conflict. Elsewhere, these packs have become a menace for wildlife. Jodhpur’sgazelles, for example, have been hunted to near-extinction by 3 lakh stray dogs. Same is the story with blackbucks in Fatehabad or inside the Kanpur zoo.

While India’s 25 million-plus stray dog population is easily targeted, the bulk of India’s 10 million pet dogs — in fact, their owners — are the real problem. In India, one does not need to register, vaccinate or sterilise one’s pets. There is no penalty for abandoning pets or letting them loose. As a result, hundreds of unwanted pet dogs and pups are dumped on streets and thousands are allowed to run out of their owners’ premises to mate with street dogs.

To check numbers, we started killing the strays. But biologically, it is impossible to control a population by killing a few. We did not have the nerve for mass slaughters and moved on to sterilisation. Animal Birth Control (ABC) is India’s official strategy for two decades now. But even ABC requires scale: at least 70 percent of a population must be sterilised within six months to arrest population growth. No Indian city has been able neuter 500-odd dogs daily.

Yet, culling and neutering have worked to an extent as population checks. But for every stray dog neutered, dog owners let their pets add more to our streets. Then dog feeders make these packs aggressive enough to attack strangers. It gives dogs a bad name. It gives dog haters reasons to seek mass culling and dog lovers a credo of defending the indefensible.