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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

#161

Post by NikkiA »

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.

Adopting a US approach and developing a barrett M107 compatible tranq dart would probably solve that problem.

Might be an expensive overkill for a single dog, but c'est la vie, it'll boost the GDP dumping all that money into mil dev anyway.

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

#162

Post by krowek »

shiroiuma wrote: post #22
autoexec wrote: post #4

That was an amazing achievement, treating something like 10,000 dogs a year for 15 years! Now that the initiative has ended I hope that some form it continues since maintaining a sterilized and vaccinated population will be a lot easier and less expensive than waiting until things get out of hand again. Outsiders wandering in and escaped pets turned strays have the potential to undo much of their great work.

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.

This is a very good question because it touches many grounds. What's the humanist position on this? What's the (many) religion's position on this? And I'd also say, economically speaking, what's more viable? To euthanize them or to sterilize them?

I'm totally biased in that euthanizing animals isn't a decision humans are meant to take unless you do have a responsibility for the animal (it's your pet, and it's ill, for instance). But in this specific case, no single human or humans have a direct responsibility for hundreds or thousands of dogs.

The proposition on euthanizing stray animals looks just like a temporal, quick and dirty solution that teaches nothing to humans more than hiding the dirty under the carpet. Nothing after this will prevent stray animals to grow in number after some are reintroduced.

Moreover, it isn't surprising that such points of view like yours are shared as of today, if we stop to think how all those animals ended sick, malnourished, and unprotected. There are people that still think that animals shouldn't be sterilized because of their "will" to reproduce themselves, or are just too lazy to do so.

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

#163

Post by krowek »

_8j50 wrote: post #144

I hate this so much. Humans are a disease when considering only things like this. What authority does any human have to neuter animals at random? Why? Because they will suffer? The kick them out to the wild if you don't want to see their suffering, let them adapt to there. Few things disgust me more than cruelty disguised as kindness. You can own an animal, you can kill one but only for food or clothing and other sur…

Not every place on Earth has the same weather through the year as those countries you mention. Dogs aren't really animals born to live in the wild, if a dog has to go through really extreme temperatures, has no food or water, isn't that pain and suffering as well?

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

#164

Post by stef25 »

_8j50 wrote: post #144

I hate this so much. Humans are a disease when considering only things like this. What authority does any human have to neuter animals at random? Why? Because they will suffer? The kick them out to the wild if you don't want to see their suffering, let them adapt to there. Few things disgust me more than cruelty disguised as kindness. You can own an animal, you can kill one but only for food or clothing and other sur…

Have you been to Asia and seen the state that most of those dogs are in ? You aren't doing them any favors by letting them reproduce.

Dogs won't go off in to the wild by themselves, they are social animals and like being around people. Not in the least because they receive left over food and get more out of the trash. But they receive very little health care.

Not many people are bothered by them. This is all for the benefit of the animal, not us humans. IMHO.

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

#165

Post by martopix »

wouldbecouldbe wrote: post #50
martopix wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hopefully you don't have to be a Buddhist for that. Also I don't really see the advantage compared to sterilization.

Even though in certain Buddhist countries animals get slaughtered for food, taking lives of animals is a big thing in Buddhism. There is fundamentally no difference between animal consciousness and human in the buddhist view. But to take it to a human level: you dont see a difference in (chemical) castration of people with mental disability and killing them?

I think you misread my comment.

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

#166

Post by paganel »

chimen wrote: post #77
paganel wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course, dead dogs and no dogs at all are better than alive dogs, which is to say that I stand by my point. And no need to read the article as I've grown among stray dogs until relatively recently (as I'm from Eastern Europe), not the best thing ever but certainly preferable to having only us, humans, around.

By name I'd say you're romanian. Certainly you must know of the 2 kids that died there to stray dogs in the recent years right? One of them died in a parc. Also, why are you inserting yourself in a discussion about an article without reading the article?

Yes, I'm Romanian, yes, I know about those two kids (only two?), yes, I've run away from stray dogs when I was a kid more and once, and, yes, my dad himself has the mark of a dog bite on his inner calf (which he got when he was around 5 years of age).

> Also, why are you inserting yourself in a discussion about an article without reading the article?

Because of my direct lived experience with stray dogs (granted, not in Central Asia but in Eastern Europe), which I'm pretty much sure the author of the article didn't have, nor most of the people reading said article. And because I've already read similar articles countless of times, for more than 15-20 years now (just web search for Brigitte Bardot and Romania), at some point you've read one you've read them all.

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

#167

Post by datadrivenangel »

devoutsalsa wrote: post #56
linuskendall wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s not true for the most part in South Asia. Here we have dog populations that are basically native and have lived alongside humans for a long time. So these dog population are not stray pet dogs.

A couple months ago, I was hiking in Nepal. The two of us had lunch at a restaurant on the trail where there was a puppy. One of us pet the puppy, the other fed it. After lunch, as we continued the hike, the puppy started following us. For 2 hours! At first I thought we'd essentially stolen someone's dog. The Nepali guy I was hiking with explained that the puppy is basically a trail dog. It soon became obvious that t…

We had stray dogs follow us up to Everest base camp! In the snow and cold, they really wanted to get fed.

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

#168

Post by _8j50 »

stef25 wrote: post #164
_8j50 wrote: post #144

I hate this so much. Humans are a disease when considering only things like this. What authority does any human have to neuter animals at random? Why? Because they will suffer? The kick them out to the wild if you don't want to see their suffering, let them adapt to there. Few things disgust me more than cruelty disguised as kindness. You can own an animal, you can kill one but only for food or clothing and other sur…

Have you been to Asia and seen the state that most of those dogs are in ? You aren't doing them any favors by letting them reproduce. Dogs won't go off in to the wild by themselves, they are social animals and like being around people. Not in the least because they receive left over food and get more out of the trash. But they receive very little health care. Not many people are bothered by them. This is all for the…

It's not your animal, so leave it alone. Would you do the same to hungry africans for example? Same problem isn't it? Lots of people going hungry and exploding population, should they be neutered for their own sake?

People and animals are different, I get that but how is it kindess when it is an animal but cruelty when it is people? Instead of mutilating them, feed them.

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

#169

Post by _8j50 »

krowek wrote: post #163
_8j50 wrote: post #144

I hate this so much. Humans are a disease when considering only things like this. What authority does any human have to neuter animals at random? Why? Because they will suffer? The kick them out to the wild if you don't want to see their suffering, let them adapt to there. Few things disgust me more than cruelty disguised as kindness. You can own an animal, you can kill one but only for food or clothing and other sur…

Not every place on Earth has the same weather through the year as those countries you mention. Dogs aren't really animals born to live in the wild, if a dog has to go through really extreme temperatures, has no food or water, isn't that pain and suffering as well?

Yes, life is pain and suffering. You feed and shelter them, you don't mutilate their bodies. If you were hungry and starving, would you want your balls chopped off so you don't make babies? Or would you want shelter and food? Neutering isn't free. You can create dog parks/sanctuaries and collect leftover food from people and restaurants (tons of it) in exchange for tax relief or just breed animals they can hunt and ear in the park.

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

#170

Post by shiroiuma »

dncornholio wrote: post #130
zmgsabst wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is forcibly sterilizing animals better than forcibly sterilizing humans, in such a view? Or in their own framework, did Bhutan just engage in genocide against an unwanted demographic?

If we believe that animals were created by someone for men, it would follow that men were also created for animals since some animals do eat human flesh.

The problem I see here is that dogs are not just "animals". They're artificial creations of humans, and an invasive species when they're not kept as pets inside homes. There's a good reason that, for instance, in the Australian outback they kill, on sight, and feral cat they find: they're invasive species that predate the local native animal species to extinction. Animals do not have a right to live when they don't belong in a particular ecosystem, especially when those animals aren't even natural to begin with.

If we were talking about a native species of bear, things would be entirely different.

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