29 Aug. Roti is just not enough!

I am a card-carrying member of the dog lovers party, but perhaps it is time to make a distinction: a) dog lovers who go around feeding dogs and feel most virtuous. b) dog lovers who recognize that the stray population would be much better served if you provide them roti yes, but also rabies shots, and sterilization.
Every street and street corner has people who come dutifully loaded (wearing their halos), with bags of food or glucose biscuits (stop feeding them the glucose…you’re killing them softly with your song), and shower Moti, Tina, Munna, Langda and other quadrupeds with victuals. It makes for a pretty sight no doubt, but listen up: For every dog you feed, there are hundreds being born, starving, coming under car tyres, being tortured by young people for laughs, getting diseases, biting people, barking their lungs out at night, moving in near-feral packs, and then dying some horrible death somewhere.
Students in the city particularly take note: buying a packet of biscuits and milk from your college corner shop and tossing it to that endearing sweet-faced sadak-chaap, does not make you a dog lover. If you really love them, take responsibility. Start with just two of them, and have them vaccinated and sterilized. It will take a little more than kuchykooing over it to have a dog sterilized. You’ll need to befriend them (start with just one if you will), talk to a vet (the city is full of socially conscious vets and animal-related NGOs) who will schedule a sterilization and charge you minimally. The vet will also deworm, vaccinate and mark the dog, so that it is now safe on the street. Keep track of the dog for a few days while he or she heals, and that’s it. You will have done something much more significant than merely feeding it. Do bother to deworm it and have it take its shots once a year, if you really care. All of this can be done without taking the dog into your home. Puppies just six or so weeks old can be sterilized very easily by the vet, and this could be the starting point for anyone who is currently watching a batch of cute puppies in the ditch nearby.
Who better to tackle the multiplying stray dog population than dog lovers, rather than angry dog despisers who, fed up with the situation, resort to sudden bouts of poisoning, or rounding up, cramming into municipal vehicles and electrocuting after five hell-like days waiting for their turn to be exterminated?
Possibly the civic administration has some scheme on paper to sterilize and inoculate strays, but there seems to be not much to show for it in terms of targets set or achieved. How should I put this….their excuse is usually the excuse used by 6 year olds: ‘the dog ate my homework’. (Try getting a dog licence, as this paper too has reported recently, and see how hard it is.) And since most of us do not have the time or inclination to wade through the thick swirling lethargy in these offices, it’s best that we, the city’s dog lovers, do something about the strays on our own steam.
In a society where children/elders/the disabled are routinely neglected and abused, it may seem pointless, perhaps facetious to some, to talk about how we treat dogs - but I’m going to, because any kind of abuse and neglect is on a continuum, not in a hierarchy.
The other poor wretches in this city are the ‘breed/brandname’ dogs that people proudly acquire. For every dog lover in this city, there are at least two more who are what can at best be called ‘dog fanciers’. The idea of keeping a dog catches their fancy – perhaps because the Rs 10,000-20,000 tag makes them feel like they’re getting themselves some prestigious acquisition. But in less than four to six months, things are not that rosy. The creature grows big, chews up stuff, needs exercises, needs time and love… and the shine quickly wears off on the whole ‘Our Dog’ thing. Those with a little conscience take a stab at finding a new home for the dog, and sometimes do. The more ingenious and ruthless of the lot simply stuff the hapless creature into the new SUV, drive down to NDA Road, Mulshi or some such, let it out, and drive away. Easy.
Somebody famously said: “A society is judged by how it treats its weakest members and its animals.”
Gouri Dange
Pune Mirror