Canine Conundrum--How Can Dogs Fit in Human Society?

In March of this year, fifty-some stray dogs were captured by the garbage collection unit of Juifang Township, part of Taipei County. They were locked in a garbage dump and starved to death. Word spread, and domestic conservation groups accused the county government of being too cruel in dealing with the problem of stray dogs. Overseas Chinese responded with a protest petition, and the signatures increased with the participation of international conservation organizations, which called on Taiwan to pay more respect to the animals' right to life.

Homeless street dogs only tend to increase, not diminish, but personnel in relevant agencies are insufficient to deal with the dilemma. A complete set of pet-management regulations is not to be found. Today our methods of dealing with stray dogs in many areas seems rather crude indeed.

Yet catching and destroying street dogs doesn't really seem to solve the quandary of "homeless hounds." Why are there so many of them? How can we prevent them from increasing even further? If we lack a whole set of well-rounded regulations, the street dog population will continue to increase, and the incidents of them being starved to death will probably not go away.

There are simply too many stray dogs. The Stray Animal Home has not been open long, but it's already packed to overflowing.

A world chock full of dogs

According to the estimates of the United Nations and the World Society for the Protection of Animals, the ratio of people to dogs is probably ten to one. That is to say, today there are nearly 500 million dogs on earth.

Veterinarians are aware of an even more startling set of figures. After female dogs reach ten months of age, they become fertile and remain so for an average of six years. During this time they may bear an average of four pups per year. Within six years, a single female dog can produce 67,000 descendants. Because the environment is actually less than ideal, the true outcome of dogs' procreation is not so immense, but their potential cannot be ignored.

In the USA, for example, where pets are the most prevalent, each day 10,000 babies are born, compared to nearly 40,000 puppies. Every year between 5.4 and 9.1 million unwanted dogs are "humanely eliminated."

Japan has to dispose of one million stray dogs annually. Starting in 1966, pet dog exchanges have been held in Tokyo in the hope that people can find the pet that suits them best, and lessen the likelihood of dogs being abandoned.

According to a survey by the veterinary medicine department of National Taiwan University, Taiwan has 2.3 million canines, which equals one tenth of the overall human population, but if unclaimed street dogs are added in, there is on the average one dog for every household.

A sign in a British car park reminds careless masters not to ill-treat their dogs. （photo by Vincent Chang）

Easier to dump dogs than raise them

According to a survey conducted by Dr. Jason Yeh of Taiwan University's veterinary medicine department, the average life expectancy of urban street dogs is 2.3 years, only one fifth of a dog's natural lifespan--far shorter than dogs with homes. But stray dogs only continue to increase, not diminish. The simple explanation is--people dump their pets.

Around Christmas, there tend to be more dogs on the streets in European and North American countries, because pet owners go on holiday and can think of nowhere to put the pooch, so they simply throw it away. Many people buy puppies as Christmas gifts for children, but it's easier to buy a dog than raise it. Thus, in many cities, nearly one in every three dogs ends up without an owner.

The fashion of raising pets started in the industrial societies of 19th century Europe and has blown to the four corners of the Earth. Recently, Western countries have been breeding tens of thousands of puppies and exporting them to Asia, where the economies are booming. Asia has become the region with the biggest potential of creating a large stray-dog population on the heels of Europe and North America.

Nowadays Taiwan has an addition of 1.8 million dogs every year, 37% of which get lost or are abandoned in the process of being raised. That means that 600,000 dogs are added to the streets every year.

Dogs were first brought in by humans from the wild. In ancient times dogs were also known to roam around uncontrolled, but the environment was such that dogs had little impact upon the lives of humans. Today, the urban environment imposes restrictions on dogs, which need space to move. The chance of dogs living a vagrant existence increases greatly in big cities, where garbage piles up but is not easily cleared away, enhancing the chance for abandoned dogs' survival. This is one of the reasons why impoverished nations have similar amounts of stray dogs as advanced nations.

The residents of Taipei dump their garbage on the side of the road every day, where it waits for personnel from the department of sanitation to come pick it up. This system only encourages cats, dogs, rats and roaches to snatch the best morsels first, and it increases the animal population within the city.

When people light-heartedly throw their family dog out into the streets, the whole society must collectively shoulder the dilemma of the increasing spread of disease.

Today, of every litter of newborn pups, how many will find a master? Conservationists encourage people to have their dogs spayed or neutered, to reduce the number of hungry and cold strays on the street.

A hazard to children

If someone took the time to do a modest survey, we would discover the relationship between man and man's best friend is not as amicable as we imagine. Great Britain, the country with the earliest history of industrialization and urbanization, has nearly 50,000 traffic accidents per year involving dogs. The annual cost from traffic collisions, loss of livestock and medical fees is as high as ?70 million, over US$100 million.

In Taiwan, during the month of January 1992, children were chased and bitten by packs of abandoned dogs in Yungho, Hsintien and Hualien. The number of dogs is usually directly proportional to human populations, and Yungho City has one of the highest human population densities in Taiwan. "If the objective situation does not change, these kinds of shocking incidents will inevitably reoccur," writes Taiwan University's Jason Yeh in a report dealing with an incident in which three part-German-shepherd mongrels bit and injured a two-year-old boy surnamed Lin.

Children in particular, being far less wary, may make quick movements to pet a dog and unwittingly provoke its attack. According to National Taiwan University Hospital emergency room records, the largest category of people who have been bitten by dogs are boys under the age of 14.

Furthermore, more than 100 kinds of communicable diseases can be transmitted to humans by dogs. The work preventing diseases spread by dogs only adds to social expenditures in many countries.

Do cities really need dogs?

There have been no cases of rabies in Taiwan in 30 years. Yet in all the world only a few countries have completely wiped out this disease. Outside of Australia, Antarctica, Taiwan and Japan, dogs still infect 20,000 people with rabies every year.

A survey conducted by the ROC Environmental Protection Agency in 1993 indicated that of the estimated 2,300,000 domestic dogs in Taiwan, only around 55,000 had completed rabies inoculation and registration, a rate of less than 3%. "If rabies entered Taiwan, there would certainly be the potential for an epidemic," observes Taiwan University plant pathology and entomology department associate professor Shih Cheng-jen, who has done research on the problem of stray dogs for the Environmental Protection Agency. The likelihood is particularly high in Taipei City, where the density of stray dogs is high enough for communicable diseases to explode at any time. This is one reason why when rumors circulated in 1989 that imported Tibetan mastiffs were infected with rabies, people all over Taiwan were stricken with panic.

In 1970 Time magazine published an article called "Do Cities Really Need Dogs?" which observed that every dog creates 0.34 kilograms of fecal matter every day. If people do not sweep it up, it negatively affects the appearance of the city. The writer questioned whether people should be allowed to raise dogs in the city.

Does the city need dogs? Dog lovers will naturally say, "yes," because in today's city, animals that have a connection with nature are already extremely scarce. People really like dogs. We derive a feeling of comfort from them. People and dogs can compose a harmonious urban landscape together, but if cities need dogs, cities need more responsible people.

It's a pity that in the past nothing was done about irresponsible pet owners. The way people traditionally solved the stray-dog problem was actually very similar to the methods used in Taiwan today....

Drown them!

In the last century, London, England had a serious street dog problem. At one time they threw 5000 street dogs into the River Thames with the intent of drowning them. The story goes that the stench emitted by the dead dogs forced the assembled MPs in the Palace of Westminster, which lies close to the river, to pinch their noses and flee.

Every year, all over the world, countless dogs are captured on the street by people, and killed by cruel, primitive means. In Brazil, dogs are pushed into a decompression chamber and asphyxiated to death. In Argentina, stray dogs are terminated with poison. In India, wandering street dogs are electrocuted and buried; some are merely rendered unconscious and buried alive. In Europe and North America, unwanted dogs are what is euphemistically called "put to sleep," but many healthy canines are unjustifiably lined up for extermination.

The problem is so serious that, according to a survey by the Environmental Protection Agency, 84% of Taiwan's population supports impounding dogs that wander the streets.

After they have been apprehended, the fate of dogs is predictable. There are no strict requirements for the registration of the dog population, so the rate of stray dogs being picked up by owners is low. City and County animal shelters are also extremely lacking. Even private organizations are overwhelmed. For instance, the Stray Animal Home, which can shelter 300 animals, was packed to overflowing less than three months after it opened. For these reasons, most dogs that have been impounded by the local authorities are usually put to death.

For more than a century, many countries have allowed their dog population to expand. Dogs are willfully abandoned, then systematically slain in large numbers as a way of cleaning up somebody else's mess. In the end, what was once viewed as a quick and easy solution has only led humankind down the path of bloodshed, year after year.

A long period of time elapsed before human beings realized that in this battle with dogs, the enemy is ourselves. Many places have gradually changed course. Starting with a complete overhaul, they are emphasizing managing dog owners and their dogs, to thus break free of the endless cycle of slaughter.

Taiwan, which has been decried for its killing of unwanted dogs, has in fact been falsely accused. In comparison to the West, Taiwan in the last 30 years has never had a record of carrying out a large-scale massacre of dogs. But learning from the example of the West, we should not repeat the West's mistakes. Especially because an international consensus has begun to emerge concerning animal welfare, Taiwan should not walk down a regressive path.

First take care of the pup at home

It is impossible for most nations to undertake draconian measures as has mainland China, forbidding the raising of dogs in cities. Nevertheless, the age is coming to an end when people can raise dogs and then just let them go. If the dog is to survive amidst human society, then dog owners must expend some energy, so that dogs can become the good partners of society.

After the Juifang incident, the Taipei County and city governments put forward a plan to levy a head tax on dogs and implant microchips in their bodies. To raise a dog one must pay the extra tax, and if a dog should get lost, the microchips can be used to locate its master. The two measures could both help reduce the number of unwanted dogs on the street.

Perhaps it is still too early to implement the concept of implanting dogs with microchips, but the Council of Agriculture is already formulating a legal mandate that all owners register their dogs, giving each dog an official residence. In the future when a record system based on microchips or ear tattoos has been put in place, every dog will have a file which can be checked. In this way not only can dogs' owners be quickly located and lost dogs be brought back to their masters' sides, but those who through ill will abandon their dogs can also be severely punished. Registering and recording the dog population can also eliminate many unprepared masters.

In Sweden, dog tags and dog taxes are both compulsory, and the retrieval rate of lost dogs is as high as 90%. Animal shelters in the capital Stockholm are never full to capacity, and can even serve as short-stay kennels.

There is yet another source of the stray dog problem--professional breeders. Starting in the 1970s, raising dogs became all the rage, and breeding dogs became quite profitable. Dog vendors tried to whip up excitement about the breeds they were selling. People were even breeding dogs in apartments as small as 360 square feet, but little forethought was given toward the genuine demands of the market or whether the dogs' native physique was compatible with the environment and climate of Taiwan.

Alex Zee, secretary-general of the China Kennel Association, believes that today dog merchants lack an understanding of the rules of the game, and this is a cause of numerous problems. For example, as long as no standards are in place for the space and equipment for raising dogs, not only do the dogs suffer, but it is impossible to get rid of irresponsible dog sellers. Buyers therefore often purchase sick dogs, and this is one cause of abandonment.

Within the Animal Protection Law, which will be reviewed this year by the Executive Yuan, the Council of Agriculture hopes to stipulate that in the future animal dealers, including wholesalers and retail pet shops, be required to obtain licenses. For ease of supervision, the government is also considering placing such standards as residential environment and veterinary examination in the license-issuing procedures. Alex Zee believes we should even create zoning regulations and minimum space requirements to control the areas in which people can go about raising and selling dogs. In this way, we can reduce unpleasant noises in residential neighborhoods. And if the space is sufficiently big, the dogs can also receive good quality care.

Dogs need birth control too!

In the view of many veterinarians, all of these measures, if not accompanied by spaying and neutering, will have little hope of controlling the increase of the dog population. So-called dog welfare would be mere empty talk.

Huang Hui-pi, associate professor of veterinary medicine at Taiwan University, points out that in Taiwan many dog owners still have "psychological barriers" to "fixing" their beloved dog, an act they consider inhumane, because they haven't received the dog's consent. But today, of every litter of newborn pups, how many will in reality find a master?

Because of the seriousness of the problem, people cannot afford to invest too many emotions in the issue. Overseas, many good-hearted people donate money specifically for sterilizing dogs. This action in fact can reduce the number of dogs who must be put to sleep.

The city of Los Angeles, for example, put to death 110,000 dogs in 1971. After a low-cost sterilization program was put into effect, by 1986 the number had dropped by nearly half. The success was even more apparent in Vancouver, British Columbia, where within the eight year span between 1976 and 1984 the number of slaughtered dogs dropped from 80,000 to less than 9000.

The pity is that many governments are afraid the cost will be excessively high and are unwilling to use this reliable, humane and positive method. For instance, the Taipei County government estimated they would have to spend more than NT$400 million to sterilize all of its unclaimed dogs. But if we continue to procrastinate implementing such a program, the costs of not sterilizing are almost certain to be even higher, due to traffic accidents, bite-related injuries, problems in sanitation and health, the expense of destroying unwanted dogs every year, and the damage improper handling of stray dogs does to the national image.

A yellow-ribbon affair

Besides having a system for managing household dogs, Western countries usually leave a certain amount of time for people to either retrieve or adopt dogs found wandering the streets. And when terminating the dogs, they use reasonably humane procedures, such as injecting them with barbital, which leads to a painless demise.

International animal protection activists and veterinarians also admit that mercy killing and sterilization are ultimately the worst solutions. They are only relatively "rational" ways of dealing with problems that already exist.

Western measures are not perfect. Neither are they necessarily suited for the East. Today in many areas such as India and mainland China, people are not willing to demand that the sanitation department clear out all the stray dogs just for the sake of the city's appearance. Many nominally ownerless dogs often have someone feeding them.

Animal protection groups within the ROC would like to see the government grasp the problem at its root, so that dogs that are now household pets will not continue to be jettisoned onto the streets in large numbers. When stray dogs are caught, they should be cured of parasites, and spayed or neutered, then released back into their original territory. Only seriously ill or hostile dogs should be put to sleep. The Stray Animal Home also suggests beginning a "yellow ribbon campaign," telling everyone to tie a yellow ribbon 'round all the dogs that have been "snipped," so that sanitation personnel can identify them.

Nature's balance disturbed

Nevertheless, to comprehensively solve the problem of these roaming rovers, we still need to meet a number of conditions. Taiwan Province and the separately administered municipalities of Taipei and Kaohsiung have long had a so-called "domestic dog management system." This set of laws stipulates that dogs must have rabies vaccinations. Based on this, every dog can be registered, and tracing and record-keeping can be put into effect. The ideal is for every dog to eventually have a registered domicile. But in the past, rabies vaccine inoculations have not been exhaustive. Because of this a registration system for the entire dog population cannot be vitiated.

Alex Zee is concerned whether new pet management methods will be able to genuinely institute registration of the dog population.

Even if we had a set of management procedures that were very professional and took into account every last detail, if the implementation was not thoroughgoing, the numbers of dogs on the street would still quickly increase. For nearly a hundred years, Britain has been struggling industriously with the problem of its canine lumpenproletariat, yet in the early 1990s, 5000 stray dogs were captured in London in a single day.

The balance between humans and canines has already spun out of kilter; therefore, it will take a long time before the problem of unwanted dogs can be contained at a stable level and not continue to spread.

Successful dog population control must be entrusted to education, whose results can only be seen over the long term. Wang Yi-ju, the National Taiwan Normal University Institute of Environmental Education, who chose stray dogs as the subject for her master's thesis, notes that none of Taiwan's elementary school text books mention how to care for dogs, with the exception of a single essay by the writer Lin Liang on the warm feelings between him and his pet. No text book explains to children that raising dogs requires a number of conditions, including sufficient space and a responsible commitment to the dog.

It's hard to know a dog's heart

Huang Hui-pi states emphatically that the entire process of managing street dogs, including sterilization, mercy killing and monitoring commercial breeders, requires the assistance of veterinarians. Nevertheless, the training process of veterinary medicine lacks a fitting understanding of canine population expansion.

Even as recently as 1994, Taiwan University's veterinary medicine department included information about the canine population boom in veterinary theory class. "Veterinary medicine plays a crucial role in the population control of dogs," says Huang Hui-pi. "It's a pity that they don't think it's their business."

In the past, academic research on dogs has concentrated on diseases, which leads to a lack of understanding of dogs' nature. This is one reason for the increase in unwanted dogs. Taiwan University veterinarian Yang Heng-leng comments that behavioral problems count as the second highest cause of dog abandonment.

People assume they understand dogs, and for this reason dogs end up being misunderstood. For instance, a pampered house-dog might give its owner a bite, and then be accused of treason. In the blink of an eye, it could find itself a homeless dog of the streets.

Many kinds of behavior are fundamental parts of the dog's nature, but businessmen intentionally conceal them when making a sale. For example, because of their work pulling sleighs, the compulsion to drag things has been selectively bred into huskies. In the city, they yank their masters like crazy all over the road. Hunting dogs have been bred with a love of barking, to draw their master's attention. When raising dogs in a city, owners are visited with many a torment, and the result is an increase in the number of abandoned dogs.

When dog bites man, punish man

Whether in education or law, many current procedures should in reality not be purely aimed at preventing the production of stray dogs. An even more positive approach would be to consider the welfare of the animal. Even a masterless street dog should receive an appropriate level of care. We should have a humane process for catching and killing dogs that absolutely must be put to death.

One of the aspects of the Animal Protection Law, which the Council of Agriculture is currently drafting, is the welfare of pets. The academic community suggests legally restricting minors from purchasing pets if not accompanied by an adult. Owners should be required to notify authorities whenever the dog changes hands. And minimum requirements should be placed on the space given to raising dogs, such as the number of dogs that can be kept in an apartment.

Some people feel there will be difficulties with implementation, but Huang Hui-pi believes "the law should be a bit more advanced than reality." In Britain of the previous century, for example, innocent dogs were drowned. Today, if a dog bites someone, it will not be killed out of resentment.

After a biting incident involving a Rottweiler, Britain passed the Dangerous Dog Act of 1991. Because there had been more than 80 incidents of Rottweiler attacks in the UK, some people demanded that, as in the past, the dog be put to death. But a British association of veterinary surgeons bravely spoke out for the dog's just treatment, pointing out that it was human training that caused the dog to have a completely attack-oriented nature. In addition, the owner was fully aware of the dog's personality, but did not take any precautions. Therefore, the dog should not be killed. On the contrary, it is the owner who should be punished with imprisonment. The Rottweiler was neutered, to prevent its unstable, vicious demeanor from being genetically passed on and creating more injuries in the future.

People must realize that the dog problem is actually of our own making. Only if people take complete responsibility will there come a day when all the distress that dogs have brought humankind is resolved.

Are the dogs fighting back?

Some people say that the most profitable exchanges human beings can make are carried out with dogs. Humans give dogs their surplus food, time and space, and the dogs return the favor with all the love in their hearts.

But how can dogs return anything to people who don't even give them the time of day, who toss them out on the streets? Is the stray dog problem that vexes our minds today simply the way dogs are repaying modern man?

[Picture Caption]

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"Other dogs enjoy a happy family life with their masters, but I drift away, a homeless dog of the street." In modern society, dogs are being forced into positions at opposite ends of the spectrum.

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There are simply too many stray dogs. The Stray Animal Home has not been open long, but it's already packed to overflowing.

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A sign in a British car park reminds careless masters not to ill-treat their dogs. (photo by Vincent Chang)

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Today, of every litter of newborn pups, how many will find a master? Conservationists encourage people to have their dogs spayed or neutered, to reduce the number of hungry and cold strays on the street.