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Bhutan declares its entire street dog population fully sterilized and vaccinated

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Re: Bhutan declares its entire street dog population fully sterilized and vaccinated

#131

Post by photon_lines »

cheschire wrote: post #122
stef25 wrote: post #100

Quite the achievement. Many years ago on a Thai beach there were a few stray dogs and the locals said one was called "Balls" because he was the only one that they couldn't sterilize. Every time the vet arrived Balls would smell him a mile away and just bolt, disappearing for a few hours.

It's sunrise and a vet stands at the edge of a parking lot, at the top of a short flight of stairs leading down to the beach below. Off in the distance a few hundred meters away, a dog jogs off down the empty beach. The vet, arms hanging by his side and feeling dejected, simply says "Balls..." and turns away.

Knowing how easily even the smallest things torture me, I deliberately avoid contact with them. A cloud passing in front of the sun is enough to make me suffer. How then should I not suffer in the darkness of the endlessly overcast sky of my own life? With Balls running down that sandy beach and humping any hope for my irreverent and everlasting search for peace? My everlasting search for isolation?

Re: Bhutan declares its entire street dog population fully sterilized and vaccinated

#132

Post by Kye »

striking wrote: post #52
shiroiuma wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't get it. Why not just euthanize them? Surely that would be cheaper than sterilizing and vaccinating them all, and the benefits would be seen sooner.

You actually want the sterilized strays to remain so that they put pressure on the resources that would otherwise feed the unsterilized strays. That suppresses the stray population even further. Also, wtf?

It's the same reason releasing sterilized mosquitoes of the few dangerous-to-humans species is so effective.

Re: Bhutan declares its entire street dog population fully sterilized and vaccinated

#133

Post by [deleted] »

School-Cotton wrote: post #114
saalweachter wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's an interesting historical and semantic question. So there may not be any such thing as a "wild pigeon". Pigeons were domesticated so long and widely that all modern pigeons in the wild may be the feral descendants of ancient domesticated pigeons. But we still view modern pigeons as just a thing that exists out in the world. If street dogs have been a self-sustaining population for long enough does that change…

I’m not sure the exact answer, but one major difference between stray dogs and truly wild animals is that dogs typically can’t survive in the wild, they need to live near human settlements. This sets them apart from wolves (the nearest wild relatives of dogs).

[deleted]

Re: Bhutan declares its entire street dog population fully sterilized and vaccinated

#134

Post by tibbydudeza »

weinzierl wrote: post #54

Congratulations! Rabies is such a scary disease but these vaccination campaigns do work. Germany, Estonia, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Austria and the Czech Republic became officially rabies free in 2003 after many years of vaccinating wild foxes and all the red rabies warning signs of my childhood are finally gone.

Did they not carpet bomb the forests with pre-vaxxed chicken heads ???. Rabies is terrible - dead man walking.

Re: Bhutan declares its entire street dog population fully sterilized and vaccinated

#135

Post by tibbydudeza »

ajb wrote: post #72
athreyac8 wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dogs as food?

People will eat anything when necessary. This is a famous restaurant menu from the 1870 siege of Paris: https://www.messynessychic.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/Me... It contains entries such as Consommé d'Eléphant, Le Civet de Kangourou, and Le Chat flanquè de Rats

Seems the Paris Zoo soon became empty :)

Re: Bhutan declares its entire street dog population fully sterilized and vaccinated

#136

Post by tibbydudeza »

unsupp0rted wrote: post #15

I wish Turkey would do this too. Street dogs gather in packs and periodically attack people: not just small children, they go after grown men and women who are just walking down the street during daylight hours. This is true in major cities, like Ankara. When I’m there I avoid walking around after sunset or in areas without people, primarily because I don’t want to be stuck in the open with 3 or 4 hungry street dogs…

I thought it was a cat nation since the prophet had one and dogs are considered unclean in Muslim tradition.

Re: Bhutan declares its entire street dog population fully sterilized and vaccinated

#137

Post by RGamma »

hrkucuk wrote: post #91
_giorgio_ wrote: post #79

Why do you even need to have a street dog population?

I don't know about Bhutan but street animals (mostly dogs & cats) is very common in Turkiye. From cultural point of view we see them as real residents of the place, we are taking up their land. So we are committed to treat them and feel responsible for their care as well. From a practical point of view, like other commentators suggested, they take care of the habitat - cats prevent rodents from going overpopulated et…

We have taken in two dogs from shi^D^D^D places with feral dog populations (Eastern Europe and Sardinia). Both were ill and heavily traumatized (took me two years before I was able to touch the one of them).

It took 2-3 years per dog and lots of financial and time investment for good food, medicine and upbringing to get them to be somewhat normal.

Are you sure you haven't simply rationalized the dysfunction away?

Re: Bhutan declares its entire street dog population fully sterilized and vaccinated

#138

Post by alephnerd »

_giorgio_ wrote: post #79

Why do you even need to have a street dog population?

In India, it's because a very prominent MP (and aunt of INC Rahul Gandhi / daughter in law of former PM Indira Gandhi) in the BJP is a massive dog lover and militantly opposed to regulating the stray population. [0][1]

[0] - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/People_for_Animals

[1] - https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/meerut/retired-doct...

[2] - https://www.deccanchronicle.com/nation/in-other-news/060323/...

Re: Bhutan declares its entire street dog population fully sterilized and vaccinated

#139

Post by pookha »

striking wrote: post #52
shiroiuma wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't get it. Why not just euthanize them? Surely that would be cheaper than sterilizing and vaccinating them all, and the benefits would be seen sooner.

You actually want the sterilized strays to remain so that they put pressure on the resources that would otherwise feed the unsterilized strays. That suppresses the stray population even further. Also, wtf?

You want packs of stray dingo dogs running around your kids and your homes? I see no value in that. Seems more intuitive for the community at large to use a shelter-system...When I was ten or eleven I nearly got mauled by a seventy pound stray dog that was fighting my neighbors dog. Would have made no difference had that thing been vaccinated.

Re: Bhutan declares its entire street dog population fully sterilized and vaccinated

#140

Post by RGamma »

samus wrote: post #86
troupo wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not odd. Sterilization without any additional measures is useless. People will keep buying and abandoning dogs. And if there's enough food, they will reproduce faster than you can catch and sterilize them

Since they have been doing it for 15 years, they now presumably have structures and processes in place to keep up with sterilizing more dogs. They also had lots of volunteers helping. If this keeps going, it's probably manageable in the future.

The only sane, permanent solution is to police (prospective) animal owners or traders, who are the actual root cause of such mess. Why should everybody else compensate indefinitely for their lack of care and character?
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