2026

Praveen Test BY ILONA OTTER |Oct 11 “We need first more awareness campaigns to make owners understand about the need for spay/neuter surgery.”  This is a very common reply I get when talking about the need to make spay/neuter surgery more accessible for dog owners. But do we really first need more awareness campaigns? How much more awareness is needed? What happens when everyone in a target area is fully aware of the benefits of spay/neuter? Does the number of operated dogs

How to close the loop? And why it matters? BY ILONA OTTER |September 16, 2026 How can we close the loop? “All the vets in our program have left, and now we have to again train new ones.” Have you faced something like this before? As per my experience, this is a very common scenario that is hindering the smooth functioning of many ABC programs in India. Vets are leaving the job after a couple of years, sometimes just after 6-8 months. Amidst

Beyond the benchmark of surgical speed: De-commoditising the veterinarian in the ABC sector BY ILONA OTTER |May 2, 2026  For decades, the success of Animal Birth Control (ABC) programs has been measured by a single, cold metric: The number of dogs operated per day (or by week/month/since the agency begun working in an area). This method of measuring success has made the ABC-program -sector to fall into a dangerous habit: valuing the veterinarian only for the mechanical speed of their hands.   The “per-dog”

How many dogs are left to do? BY ILONA OTTER | April 7th 2026 “How many dogs are left to do?” This common question exposes a fundamental misunderstanding of rabies control and humane dog population management in India. The question stems from the idea that the ABC program – animal birth control, that is, surgical sterilisation of dogs, would be the same or equal to rabies control. This is not exactly the case, even in the scenario where dogs are also vaccinated