Happylittlegreensquirrel Posted May 9, 2014 Report Share Posted May 9, 2014 This is a blog I posted recently on the Dogstar website Why dog overpopulation is like a leaking tap If you came home from a 2 week holiday to find a tap running over a sink with the plug in and your entire house was flooded I am pretty sure your first actions would be turn off the tap and pull the plug out not grab a bucket and start to bail water or building a tank in your garden to store excess water Humane dog population management is not that different you have to tackle the cause of the problem not the end result Animals breeding are the running taps and the lack of homes are the plugged sink; quite simply globally there are too many dogs for not enough homes. Its why we cannot just adopt our way of overpopulation, there are a finite number of good homes for animals regardless of where those people choose to source a dog from if there are too many dogs they will suffer. In Asian countries like Sri Lanka where Dogstar Foundation works excess dogs are strayed on the roadside, In western countries such as the UK and America excess dogs are taken or surrender to shelters and pounds and many are euthanized after a legal holding period The HSUS estimates that animal shelters care for 6-8 million dogs and cats every year in the United States, of whom approximately 3-4 million are euthanised. Whilst The Dogs Trust Stray Dogs Survey 2013 Estimates approximately 8,985 dogs were put to sleep across the UK during the of 1st April 2012 to 31st March 2013 These figures don’t include the tens of thousands of dogs discarded from the Greyhound Racing Industry every year Adoption and rehoming centres are not bad things and rescued dogs are not inferior but there are still a finite number of homes Non rehoming shelters can provide a home for unwanted dogs but they are expensive to run and many are underfunded, understaffed and become nothing more than a living hell for the dogs trapped in them as recent experience here in Sri Lanka showed Unless we fix the leaking tap of overpopulation, rehoming centres / programs, shelters, sanctuaries will continues to be flooded by a never ending flow of unwanted animals Sterilising dogs before they can contribute to the overpopulation crisis has to be the main focus of our work because currently dogs are simply being born to die It got me thinking that organisations like Dogstar woking in developing countires running humane dog population control programs spend a lot of time identifying the root causes and pinning down the breeding chain , basically where are our dogs coming from. In Sri Lanka the most common mother of a street puppy is actually a owned female , street dogs do breed but less successfully than a well fed owned female. Equally a lot of the males fathering litters are owned dogs who are stronger , healthier can travel longer distances and fight off competition. So for us we have to sterilise both male and female dogs and owned and unowned and reach a figure of around 85 % to obtain population stabilisation http://www.dogstarfoundation.com/blog/spay...l-than-others-/ There are many papers on developing countries dog population issues with many models explaining the above in much more detail. Next month we are due to start a major new project and the first stage is dog counting , and working out the sources so we can design the most effective solution design for that area . We then have to set up impact monitoring and regularly review our impact against projected targets and if population is not reducing as planned review and re adjust I wonder if larger national charities in developed countries employed the same methods to truly drilling down to the root causes with real evidence and introduced the same type of impact monitoring if more effective solutions could be designed Sam 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Yantan Posted May 10, 2014 Report Share Posted May 10, 2014 An excellent piece Sam Did you write this yourself? It should be spread far and wide. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Happylittlegreensquirrel Posted May 10, 2014 Author Report Share Posted May 10, 2014 Thank you kindly missus Yantan I did indeed write this I got the idea for this in the shower ironically Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ian Posted May 23, 2014 Report Share Posted May 23, 2014 A strange place to write an article perhaps but I thought it interesting nevertheless. There has to be a better way than attempting to just ship ever more dogs from ever more places over here as more & more people seem to be doing. It's just not sustainable in my opinion. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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