“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 against rabies at the time of the surgery. ABC programs can be supportive tools for rabies control. But not sufficient as the only tool. Rabies transmission is prevented by vaccination, but because transmission requires close contact (bite), the risk of transmission is reduced when the dog population density is reduced.

Since one dog can only be sterilised once, the spay/neuter (ABC) surgery is is a one-off event in a dog’s life.  I can understand how many people can think that if there are X number of dogs and every day you operate y number of dogs, then one day you would reach the total of X. However, this is of course not true. Roaming dogs do not exist in closed spaces, but instead, the dog population dynamics include movements and processes of births, deaths, migration, abandonment, and adoptions within and between the different subpopulations.

These sub-populations include owned dogs that are allowed to roam free every day at least part of the day, owned dogs that get lost or abandoned, puppies born to owned dogs and then subsequently abandoned or dumped at shelters. They include dogs that get picked up from the streets and taken to shelters, from where they are returned to the streets after surgery or adopted to homes or kept forever until their death. They include dogs that migrate from other areas in search of food or due to disruptions, such as culling or relocation, in their original habitat.

While Y number of dogs are getting operated every day, the unoperated dogs can breed and add to the population. This includes both owned and ownerless dogs. This means that there is never going to be any fixed ‘remaining’ number of unoperated dogs, simply waiting without breeding, for their turn to be operated. This means you can never answer the question “How many are left?”. And therefore, such a question should not even be asked if we really want to assess the impact of a spay/neuter program in an area.

So, what would be a better question to ask to assess the success of a spay/neuter program intervention?

One could try, for example;

• How many dog owners have access to affordable spay/neuter service and annual rabies vaccination of their dogs? How many dog owners don’t have this access? What are the reasons for it? What has been done to improve access? Are these systemic changes aiming for sustainable improvement, or have they been mainly campaign-based one-off programs?
• What is the sterilisation coverage as % of the free-roaming dogs, or specifically of the free-roaming female dogs? When was this last estimated? What was the method used?
• Do we have data to show how the sterilisation coverage % has been maintained over the years? Has it been steadily at the same level, or are there fluctuations?
• Do we have a method to collate data from all the different vet service providers (NGO, private, government) to see how many dogs are being vaccinated annually?

Let’s keep asking better questions to get a better understanding.

And as for the rabies control, it is just about vaccination. Of all dogs. Starting with the owned ones. Every year. It doesn’t matter how many were vaccinated this year, and ‘how many are left?’

 They have to be vaccinated next year again.