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Bhutan declares its entire street dog population fully sterilized and vaccinated

worldanimalnews.com

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

#61

Post by Lutger »

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 remember being chased by a pack of at least twenty angry wild dogs. This was in India, not a fun experience.

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

#62

Post by ClumsyPilot »

troupo wrote: post #18
ars wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article says they've been doing it for 15 years, so there's something odd about their numbers.

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

> catch and sterilize them

Whats the limit on hiw fast you can catch and sterilise them? Neither sounds particularly difficult.

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

#63

Post by 0xDEAFBEAD »

jl6 wrote: post #38

100% is a big achievement in street dog unavailability - much harder than, say, 99.999%. In k-nines (un)availability, the cost usually increases by 10 * k to increment k by 1. It's tempting to imagine that they didn't actually get to 100%, and there are some hidden holdouts who have escaped the program and will re-establish the street dog population covertly.

Yeah I'm not sure how they would even know if it's 100% vs 99.999%

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

#64

Post by 0xDEAFBEAD »

nwiswell wrote: post #30
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…

> 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 happened to me at night in Istanbul 10 years ago. I was walking down a side street and a pack of 5-6 dogs noticed me and began to follow me. At first they were tentative, but increasingly the bolder ones in the group closed the distan…

I wonder how common this is as a cause of death.

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

#65

Post by Garlef »

athreyac8 wrote: post #33
sinuhe69 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Compared to “only” 500 millions pigs, the number of dogs is astounding. No wonder many countries also use them as food.

Dogs as food?

In germany it was forbidden only in 1986. But it's been a taboo for a longer time.

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

#66

Post by pmontra »

INTPenis wrote: post #20
masteruvpuppetz wrote: post #11

so in ~5 years time, no street dogs in Bhutan???

That's impossible. Because where do street dogs come from? They come from homes. As long as dogs exist there will be street dogs. But at least they got a huge leg up on the problem.

Street dogs make other street dogs. They don't need new ones abandoned from their owners. Only sterile dogs don't make new ones which is what this sterilization campaign is about. New street dogs will come from homes and possibly from nearby countries.

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

#67

Post by paganel »

Etheryte wrote: post #57
paganel wrote: post #51

It’s going to be just us and the pod in the not so distant feature, no need for other forms of being in the world to be around us. And then people will keep posting about their depression medication and about increasing suicide rates.

You should try actually reading the linked article, what they've done is good both for us and for the dogs. Unless you like dogs who are malnourished, unfed and have rabies.

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.

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

#68

Post by samus »

signal11 wrote: post #29
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…

This happens in India[1,2] too, and rabies cases are sadly all too common there, so I applaud Bhutan for its success. Are there any lessons for other countries in what Bhutan has achieved? Eg for India a concern is: even with a real effort it’ll be difficult just given the size of the place and the routes available for other dogs to move in. Then there’s massively underfunded local government and corruption to consid…

I have similar concerns about Bhutan. There might just come more across the borders.

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

#69

Post by FirmwareBurner »

ars wrote: post #16
wirrbel wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean as long as they don't start again too late it should be fine, right? For now, if they catch a dog the chances are high its already treated. So the return of reward is comparably low. Once the unvaccinated/unsterilized population has grown again, it makes sense again to get active. The point would be to not restart again too late.

> For now, if they catch a dog the chances are high its already treated. Wouldn't there be basically no dogs left in a couple year? So just keep the program going for another 5 years or so and they wouldn't be catching very many dogs in the first place.

>Wouldn't there be basically no dogs left in a couple year?

No. Plenty of people still won't sterilize their pets and abandon their litter in the street or some just run away or are lost or abandoned by their owners, therefore the stray dog population will never be absolute zero.

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

#70

Post by cnity »

striking wrote: post #58
cnity wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To play devil's advocate here, I do think that human sensibilities about life preservation can be inconsistent and illogical. Your comment itself is contradictory is it not? If I am to understand "Also, wtf?" to mean something like "euthanising dogs is immoral because it shortens their life", your other argument is that sterilisation is superior because it essentially starves the other dogs. How is starvation morally…

It doesn't necessarily directly starve the other dogs, they'll have less energy to attempt to reproduce with. It's not an attempt to increase the death rate as much as it is an attempt to decrease the birth rate. My "also, wtf" stands.

I think these things usually come down to perceptions of human intervention as basically bad. If you actually witnessed the death of every individual dog in your scenario as compared with euthanasia, it's not clear that it would be more pleasant at all. These dogs will die diseased and malnourished by the roadside. Again, I am not really at odds with your emotional position, I'm just interested in the moral foundations on which we sit, if that makes sense at all.

If I may make an attempt at the moral underpinning, it is something like "survival as intrinsic worth". There are flaws to this position, as with any.

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