For every dog born, another dies on the street

Today is world spay day. Some people may wonder, what does spaying (i.e. sterilising) your companion animal have to do with being an animal lover? There is plenty out there for you to read but this post aims to be a brief summary!

The average street dog lives between 2 and 5 years. We can vouch that the number of puppies and young dogs in this city far exceeds the number of older dogs. Everyone likes puppies, they are cute and manageable, at least for a few days. The reality of looking after an adult dog is that they need a lot of exercise and attention.

An adult cat does not require so much exercise and attention (they are a lot more independent), but the damage that they can cause on autochthonous species is often far superior... in closed ecosystems, such as islands, they are known to be a main driver for bird, small mammals and reptile species extinctions.

This is Margarita (to the left, Mario to the right).

She came into our life in September last year. I saw her photo on Facebook and it was obvious that she was a lost case. So we decided to adopt her. Margarita is just one of the thousand of street dogs in Santiago. She was abandoned and was found in the street in this state: 

Someone drove to a popular dog-dumping-spot and left her there with her tumour. She could not walk properly, she was full of flees and she stank. She had terrible anaemia. She is deaf, her eye sight is ok (for an old lady!) and needless to say she is not exactly a good hunter... She is still fairly traumatised by her experience and she goes into a panic whenever she feels like she may be left behind (on our last trip it was very difficult to set up the tent without her going into a massive fit of panic and crying)...

Margarita does not have one drop of resentment in her for the people that abandoned her or for anyone else. She is now a happy dog and she has constant access to a garden with grass where she can roll around. She eats home-made food, as well as other treats like cochayuyo, watermelon or chirimoyas. Her tumours have all been removed. She is a VERY IMPROBABLE EXCEPTION. This is a happy ending for her but for every Margarita there are 1000s of others which will never make it to a new home.

The term “street dog” is a little more complex than most readers would realise. Most of us assume that a “street dog” is a dog that has always lived on the street or that at some point was abandoned and now lives on the street. Well, the term in Latin America needs to be revised: In Chile, most so-called “street dogs” actually have one or more “owners”. Over here, most people consider having a dog is about feeding them, not necessarily about providing a roof over their heads, making sure they are not put in danger, taking care of their health/exercise, taking care of the health hazards/mess/noise that they may pose to others etc... Most people on this side of the world, delude themselves with the idea that the dogs are happy and that it is “nice” and “normal” to have dogs in the street as “normal citizens”. Since the situation is fairly peculiar to most of the developed world, already there is somebody that has decided to make a movie about this issue:

http://www.lostdogsfilm.org/about/

Surprise! It turns out the dogs are at large living in terrible conditions: starving, being ran over, bullied by house dogs whose irresponsible “owners” leave free to roam the streets unsupervised, poisoned by government contractors (we’ll have to wait till the film is out but this is apparently what the official way of dealing with street dogs is and most likely the reason why there are not a lot of dogs in either Las Condes or Vitacura) etc...

Day after day, on social media, on websites, on paper ads, outside supermarkets, on the street... people are trying to get some street dogs adopted. Only the luckiest dogs will ever make it to these adverts and only the luckiest among those will find homes and again only the luckiest of the luckiest of the luckiest will find a good home that will look after them for life.

Adverts like the ones below are typical (though a lot more common than these are the ones of people that have decided to breed their dogs and are giving away cute puppies which are likely to end up in the condition of the top left image of the photo below in the following 2 years) (or the ones of humans looking for "boyfriends" or "girlfriends" for their "pets" to breed)

The same dog, from ill to healthy.

All it took was a responsible carer, nice food, some medicine and a haircut

So... What can be done about this?

The first thing to do is to NEVER buy a dog or a cat. It is terrible that people make money out of a huge ethical and environmental problem. If you have time, patience, love and space for an animal in your home, ADOPT. Your money would be much better put in the pockets of people try to sort out this problem and not making it worse.

Are you getting a dog friend or a fashion accesory for people to comment on?

If you are into pedigree dogs, you should watch this:

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yZMegQH1SPg (English)
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NiHpsdlDzU4 (subtitulos en espanol)
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dd1Shqkm5mg (Deutsch)
• or read this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pedigree_Dogs_Exposed

Simply put, you do not buy your friends and this should be regardless of the species.

NEVER breed your cat or dog friend. For every dog you bring to the world, there is another that desperately needed a home, dying in the street. Moreover, there is no way that you can make sure that every puppy will end up in a responsible house for the next 15 years. Having had a look at the social fabric, there are slim chances that even one of the puppies will end up in a good home for life.

Most puppies do not end up in good homes

Become a responsible “pet owner”* This involves several things: feeding your dog properly, cleaning after your dog, vaccinating your dog, giving your dog a fair amount of exercise and finally sterilising your dog (same applies for cats).

*Note: pet owner is an awful description that we should move away from... cats and dogs are not pets, they are companion animals and a person should not “own” a friend... much more descriptive should be“companion animal carer”.