According to a publication by Smith et al (2019); The Effectiveness of Dog Population Management: A Systematic Review  dogs around the world have one of two ownership states – either they are owned or they are unowned. Very simple. Very clear. Only two categories. No need to talk about semi-owned or quasi-pets or anything that makes the matter sound more complicated than it is. A domestic dog (Canis familiaris) either has an owner or it does not have an owner.

In both categories you will find dogs that are allowed to roam free and dogs that are not allowed to roam free. Think of dogs in shelters. They are unowned, but not allowed to roam free. Unowned dogs that are confined all the time. Still very easy and clear to understand.

Now think about most of India – the medium towns, the small towns, the villages, the outskirts, and the slums. Think anywhere where people live on the ground floor and control their own door outside. Whether rich or poor or anything between – people living like this are likely to let their dog to roam free at least part of the time. At least for a morning toilet round. There is no problem in this if the door leads to a fenced or walled private garden or lands where the dog can exercise freely without coming in contact with other dogs. At least not with dogs that are not meant to be breeding with this dog, in case these dogs are unsterilised.

The problem comes when the door leads to the streets. And when the dog as well as other dogs in the neighbourhood have not been sterilised. At the end of the morning toilet, the free-roaming owned dog strolls away a bit more to the nearby restaurant backyard where she knows there is lot of edible waste, more so on the next plot where there are several chicken butcher stalls. The other dogs of the neighbourhood know this as well and this is a popular meeting place of the dogs in the mornings. Some of them have owners. Some don’t. They all come and meet in the same place.

Females in heat will be mated and after the day’s garbage has been explored and edible bits eaten, the dogs that belong to someone, return to their owners while others might continue to look for another place of garbage or go for a nap to pass the hottest hours of the day.

Two months later some household find their female dog with puppies born during the night. Very exciting for some time. Puppies are always cute. But in the end, the household can only take care of one dog. Chasing the puppies just on the street in front of their house, might not work because the puppies would keep returning to their mother. Therefore, they get placed in a cardboard box and driven somewhere further away and left on the roadside.

Thanks to the availability of edible waste and the fact that these puppies got a very good start on their life, having been taken care of by their mother dog – who in turn was taken care of and fed by her owners, these puppies have a good chance of surviving. Some might die of course but many will survive to eventually breed themselves. They will give birth to more street dogs.

Why this keeps happening? Because the owners whose dog got pregnant, did not have access to veterinary surgery services to have their dog sterilised. Why female puppies are always harder to get adopted than male puppies? Because people don’t want to deal with the bleeding during heat and they don’t want to deal with the pregnancies and puppies that seem to be an unavoidable consequence of having a female dog.

By making spay/neuter surgery services more available and accessible for all dog owners and by developing models that encourage also private and government sector practitioners to start spaying owned dogs, we can help to reduce the problem of growing street dog (unowned dog) population.

Access to vet care store offers 10% discount to all subscribers for one order placed before 31^st December. Make sure you are well equipped to make the best New Year’s Resolution you can do as a vet – to keep spaying dogs!