Saturday, March 10, 2007

Stray Dogs! a product of OUR mistakes

BMP decides to kill them.

Before taking up such an easy-to-execute decision, have they thought what caused the dogs to even exist? How much more time are we going to take to change and not punish others for our deeds?

Stray dogs, belonging to a breed called Pariah, are and have always been scavengers, that is, they live on garbage created by humans. That’s why, countries like Singapore, UK and USA, where it is a legal offence to throw garbage in the open, do not have stray dogs.

Coming to rabies, if killing the creatures spreading rabies is our way of eradicating the problem of rabies then dealing with AIDS, a disease much more challenging and dangerous than rabies, can totally be in control by eradicating the creatures who are spreading AIDS. But we would never take a such a drastic step towards those who have AIDS and is a peril to our society, only because, they belong to out own species, whereas, the former, who are as sensitive and intelligent as we, but only differ from us in their shapes and sizes, are starved and left to die.

Just as we spread awareness about AIDS, cancer and many other contagious and non-contagious diseases as attempts to deal with them, can we not do the same for the problems that we face because of the presence of stray dogs?

Keeping all the emotions behind, people of Bangalore who do not want them to die a cruel death, can do the following:

1. Form a group of as many like-minded people as possible.

2. Include a few Animal Welfare Organisation representatives in the group.

3. Fix up an appointment with the BMP authorities.

4. From what I see, neither emotional nor legal threats can be good enough a threat. So, if they request them for some considerable time and funds and giving it in writing to them that the AWOs would be dealing with the stray dog issues(by sterilization, adoption or whatever) in the pre-decided time. If they fail to keep up to their words, then the authorities would be free to take their own course of action without any protests from their side.

This is just a suggestion, which, I feel could just work!