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The Puppy at Om Beach

I’ve returned from a month-long journey to India, and all I can think about is one puppy. Three days into my trip, I stepped onto the golden curve of Om Beach and into an issue that festers across this colorful, chaotic and complex country.

As I sat by the Indian Ocean with Hillary, my roommate on a two-week yoga retreat, a small black puppy padded by. The puppy picked up a dead crab, and settled onto my towel to eat it. She was so gentle and playful that the next morning, when six of us walked the beach, we were delighted to see her again.

But just as she approached in a tail-wagging greeting, five snarling, growling, snapping dogs ran up and attacked her. Most of us backed away, but Hillary and I stood clapping our hands and yelling. The pile dispersed; the pup struggled up, yelping, and ran into the surf.

I rushed to pick her up just as the dogs circled again. Standing in the surf, holding this pup up until the frenzied pack dispersed and we could safely let her go again, I remembered my travel doctor’s warnings to not touch dogs here.

The number of stray dogs in India is anyone’s guess; one report estimates 22 million. What most worries people — and why my doctor didn’t want me touching dogs — are attacks and rabies. Rabies kills about 20,000 people every year in India, accounting for 36% of worldwide rabies fatalities. In the last decade, 523,000 dog bites have been reported in Mumbai, resulting in the deaths of 196 people.

There were dogs everywhere I went in India — from the bustling streets of Jaipur to the tiny village of Tala on the edge of Bandhavgarh Tiger Reserve. But these dogs didn’t act dangerous. They were mild-mannered, even friendly; they didn’t beg for food, but they didn’t run away, either.

To visitors, they look like strays we might rescue and place in loving homes. But they’re not abandoned or lost, and they’re not wild. Many in India’s animal-rights community call them community dogs.

Some are kept as free-ranging pets by street dwellers, slum dwellers, and rag pickers. The dogs might get fed scraps, they might get some attention, but mostly they fend for themselves. Their life expectancy is only three to four years.

Dogs have lived in India this way for thousands of years. On the surface, it’s reminiscent of a primitive scene, where dogs and humans coexist, the dogs eating humans’ garbage and providing protection. But India’s original street dogs, of a breed of dog considered one of the world’s first, are called pariahs. The same term is used for the lowest level of India’s caste system: the untouchables, the outcasts.

In the 1800s, during British rule, when the link between rabies and dogs was discovered, a massive eradication program began. Millions, if not billions, of street dogs were systematically poisoned, suffering tortuous deaths at the dark hands of strychnine.

As most brutal efforts do, this backfired. Dogs who escaped poisoning multiplied and reoccupied and attempted eradication caused an intensification of the problem: more dog fights, more accidental dog bites, more rabies.

The only thing that works to reduce rabies happens to be the most humane and responsible action toward the dogs themselves: sterilization and vaccination. Sterilizing these dogs and then returning them to their territories reduces the two things that cause dogs to bark, fight, and create situations where people are accidently bitten: mating and territory. In addition, sterilization will reduce the population of unwanted dogs.

A Land of Contradictions

What creates and sustains this large population of street dogs? In a country where garbage collection is rare, enough scraps line every neighborhood to keep the dogs well fed. Researchers into community dog ecology label this relationship symbiotic. The dogs are the garbage collectors.

They also protect the community from thievery and from other animals: monkeys, wild pigs, cats, or rats. In 1994, the municipality of Surat decided to eradicate dogs, and slaughtered thousands. With more garbage and fewer predators, the rat population exploded, followed by an explosion of bubonic plague. Hundreds of people became infected. Fifty-seven died.

The law of the land sides with the dogs. The Constitution of India states it is the duty of every citizen is to be kind and compassionate to all creatures, and it’s against the beliefs of both Hinduism and Buddhism to harm animals. Killing street dogs has been explicitly illegal in India since the passage of the 1960 Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act, which states “street dogs shall be sterilised and immunized by participation of animal welfare organisations, private individuals and the local authority.”

Also in the 1960s, the Animal Welfare Board of India (AWBI) was established to regulate and fund Animal Birth Control (ABC) projects. But it wasn’t until the 1990s that programs began, primarily in larger cities. Some are conducted by municipalities and some by nonprofits, with varying success. Where at least 70 percent of the dogs are vaccinated and sterilized during a six-month breeding season, rabies has disappeared.^[1]

Jaipur’s ABC program, run by Help in Suffering (HIS), started in 1993. The results: between 1992 and 2002, the dog population dropped by 28 percent, and human rabies cases dropped to zero, with no cases for a decade.

But in Gokarna, where the beach puppy lives, there’s no program. And some efforts, explains Honorable Secretary of In Defence of Animals Sudnya R. Patkar, have been subverted by corruption and greed, with the numbers of sterilized dogs fabricated in order to obtain more funding.

In Mumbai, a city of 18 million people and some of the world’s largest slums, results have been mixed. Five nonprofits and the municipality sterilize an estimated 30,000 dogs every year, and the dog population has declined by 70 percent in ten years, but with rabies and dog bites still high, many are unconvinced the program works and continue to clamor for eradication.

Most animal-welfare groups say it’s a matter of methodology. Unlike the nonprofits, the municipality in Mumbai picks up strays randomly, rather than using the “clean sweep method” of vaccinating and sterilizing at least 70% of the dogs in one area at a time.

Some groups address this problem. “We have an ABC Extension Project which gives training to staff from other groups undertaking such work,” writes Dr. Jack Reece, head veterinarian at Help in Suffering. “We also generate information on street dog behaviour and ecology and the effects of ABC programmes in order that such work can be led by the best available information.”

The most recent outbreak of rabies deaths in North Andhra Pradesh illustrates the importance of doing it right. For years the Visakha SPCA successfully ran an ABC program in the region, but when a new party came into power, they lost their

animal-control contract and the municipality took over. Within a year, the street dog population had increased from 7,000 to 10,000, and 700 people have died from rabies.^[2]

Visakha SPCA transformed into ABC India, a pan-Indian organization devoted to rabies eradication and the control of street dog populations through sterilization and vaccination. They released a report concluding the rabies outbreak resulted from the municipality’s practice of capturing dogs from the cities and dumping them into rural areas.

“Contrary to popular belief, it is actually the presence of vaccinated, healthy dogs that helps to keep rabies out,” says ABC India managing director Dr. Lisa Warden. “Sterilized, vaccinated, and left to live in peace in their areas, these dogs are our partners in the fight against rabies. Because they are territorial, they will not let new, unfamiliar, unvaccinated dogs into their areas.”

But India is a land of contradictions. Here, where Jain monks sweep the ground in front of them lest they inadvertently step on an insect, are some of the cruelest practices towards animals in the world: tigers killed with insecticide, cobras defanged and starved for snake charming, sloth bears tortured into dancing, and even sacred cows, foraging the streets like beggars, dead from eating plastic.

And so dog massacres continue. Whenever tragedy involving a street dog strikes, says Dr. Reece, “Municipalities seem to resort to inhumane culling as the knee-jerk response.”

From 1939 to 1999, the government of Bangalore electrocuted millions of dogs, with no decrease in dog populations, attacks, or rabies. Finally, they instituted one of the most successful sterilization programs in the country. But in March 2007, after a stray dog fatally mauled a four-year-old child, citizens went on a rampage, and the municipality, fully knowing such actions were futile, joined in — with thousands of dogs the victims.^[3]

What’s to be done? Certainly, improving the effectiveness of ABC programs would help the public recognize the benefits. All agree that a “zero-garbage-India” would be the most effective long-term situation. “If municipalities were to control rubbish, slaughterhouse waste and al fresco defecation then the food source for the dogs would largely dry up and the population decline,” says Dr. Reece. After door-to-door garbage collection began in some regions of Tamil Nadu, the dog population drastically declined.^[4] Meanwhile, the animal cruelty act is being updated to increase penalties for injuring or killing animals.

Vets Beyond Borders

The fate of that black puppy got me thinking about Doctors Without Borders. Why couldn’t veterinarians around the world take a few months to volunteer in places like India? Sending one veterinary team to Gokarna for a few months would solve the problem there.

Some organizations do this type of work, but none on the scale of Doctors Without Borders. Some, like Sudnya Patkar’s In Defence of Animals, have mobile units which travel to smaller villages for the few months it takes to get 70% of the community dogs vaccinated and sterilized. And Vets Beyond Borders, a charity based in Australia, works in Sikkim and Ladakh.^[5]

On the last morning of our yoga retreat, Hillary, walking the beach alone, saw the little black puppy nestled in the arms of a little girl sitting outside the beach shack. Given all I’ve learned, I know the chances of a good life for that puppy are slim. Still, I like to think of her that way, cared for and caring for a little girl, both of them finding love and compassion, joy and safety, with each other.

Marybeth Holleman is the author of   The Heart of the Sound: An Alaskan Paradise Found and Nearly Lost   and co-editor of Crosscurrents North: Alaskans on the Environment. Marybeth’s essays, poetry, and articles have appeared in dozens of periodicals and anthologies, including Orion, Christian Science Monitor, Sierra, Solo and The Future of Nature. See www.marybethholleman.com .

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