Barking Up The Wrong Tree – Part 3

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266 – The Annual,2015-16

About Overpopulation of Dogs

By Attila Márton

The most critical animal welfare issue for years has been that of the existence of abandoned dogs. Besides the never-ending struggle of animal rescuers and shelters to fix the lives of these animals discarded by humans, the issue raises some questions that are causing massive debates. Why on earth do people breed dogs at all when shelters are full? What is the point in buying purebred dogs for a fortune when you can choose to pick up one for a lower price and save a life at the same time? Simple questions with a simple answer: because otherwise you could never reduce the number of stray dogs in the long run. I know you are surprised by that answer.

Conspicuous Cruelty

Anyone who is registered on any social networking site will have at least one friend (virtual or personal) who feels responsible for the welfare of dogs. You repeatedly face the situation when a sad-eyed, most of the time neglected-looking dog deserving a better life, gazes at the camera in search of a new home. The emotion-filled cover text usually issues a call to action: a new dog has been found on the street, and the shelter is full again.

I guess the hardest and most emotional part of the whole animal welfare and protection scene is the rescue and rehabilitation of stray dogs. I doubt any survey exists regarding this, but I figure most of the dogs that are rescued are in very bad physical condition. Some are abused, often severely tortured, and possessing many health issues or suffering permanent damage; not to mention all the mental health issues causing behavioral problems in the future.

If you rescue dogs, you do it because you care and want to help. But while you are doing your job – and no matter whether it’s for money as your full-time profession or volunteering – you face the cruelty of mankind every single day. The routine is the same – one dog saved, rehabilitated, its health status stabilized, and now seeking new owners. Finding the new—hopefully good and permanent—owner gives the shelter some joy, but then another call arrives urging you to pick up the next dog from the street in need of immediate help and care.

I honestly confess this is a sort of thing I couldn’t do for a long time. Those who are strong enough to face and struggle through these situations get my respect. I’ve seen many animal welfare workers over the years totally burn out and give up any sort of activity related to animal protection, or just start to hate humans so much, with serious consequences for their personal and social life, not to mention their own mental well-being.

Rescuing and rehabilitating dogs is vital, but cannot be the only way of tackling this problem as a whole. It would be good not only to support the activities of rescuers, but to cut the resupply as well. Even better would be to find an effective way to reduce the number of abandoned dogs; to avoid the situation where for every one dog saved, two more end up on the street. This would be a real help and the ideal solution in the long run.

Forget for a moment about how we feel when we see a shattered dog, and let’s examine how the number of abandoned dogs could be affected and what are the main triggers that result in abandoned dogs in the first place.

The Economic Equation

If you want to solve a problem theoretically, you need to model the whole process that causes the end result, including every major and minor element having any effect on it.

The phenomena of abandoned dogs is the result of overpopulation of the species. We don’t really talk about overpopulation of squirrels, spiders and mosquitoes, but dogs are pets. And pets are connected to households. If there are more dogs than humans who keep them, there is an oversupply. More dogs than homes causes stray dogs. Another important aspect of the case is that a dog is not a product, like a TV which you can keep in a warehouse if you produce too many. However, whether intentionally or unintentionally, dogs are ‘produced’.

In this equation there are two variables at work: the current population of dogs and the humans who want to keep a dog. Both are rapidly and constantly changing, and it is impossible to predict or control them.

If you really look at the bigger picture and you want to ease the amount of work of rescuing all those dogs, you either increase the number of people who want to keep dogs or decrease the number of dogs being born.

When a dog appears on the radar of society, searching for new home – no matter if it is an abandoned dog or a new-born purebred puppy – you can’t force someone to keep it if they do not want it or have no plans to do so.

People can change their minds and find out only later that they don’t like having a dog, or it doesn’t suit them for some reason. The solution they come up with may be to drive to the woods and abandon the dog. It often happens that circumstances change and someone might be unable to keep even the most beloved pet anymore. Or a dog can also be inherited. In this situation you might be lucky and find the dog a new home, if you can’t keep it yourself. The other option is to send the dog to a shelter, no matter how bad you are going to feel or how others may despise you for this act. This is at least more humane than just throwing the dog onto the street. Life can change… and it often does!

Overproducing

It would be such a huge help if we were able to communicate with dogs directly and easily. We could just ask where they come from, where they were raised, how they came to be abandoned, and last but definitely not least, where they were born.

Puppies can come from different sources. You can pick up a dog from a shelter, a breeder, a pet shop or internet sites.

From the very moment a mating happens, there is the potential for more stray dogs to appear. Mating causes litters, and litters cause puppies who are going to need a new home sooner or later.

If we are to remember that the supply of dogs is much higher than the number of homes ready to keep a dog, then what on earth motivates those who organize a mating if the dogs who will be born are not likely to find a new home? What is the real intention of the human when they make the decision to produce a litter?

It bears repeating that if we had some statistics on the origins of dogs, that would be a huge help in working toward reducing the number of abandoned dogs, both for legislating bodies and those involved in animal welfare, on a daily basis. But there are no exact figures and no one can be sure about the percentage of the dogs coming from home breeding, or from other sources such as professional breeding, puppy farming and mating between strays.

Meanwhile, the activity of breeders is the most visible of all sources, based purely on the fact that breeders and their litters are registered. However, I honestly doubt that the population of dogs coming from breeders would represent a significant ratio of the overall number of dogs requiring homes.

As we have no definite information on the number of stray dogs, we can really only make a rough guess about how many puppies come to life already homeless, raised on the street each year.

Puppy farming is the cause of a huge animal welfare issue in most countries. First of all, it is mostly an illegal trade operating in secret. Moreover, the existence and the operation of puppy farmers are definitely off the radar.

As soon as a puppy leaves the ‘farm’, it is impossible to track it back to its origin. And with absolutely no way of determining the health and mental condition of these dogs by appearance alone, they truly are a commercial, marketable product in every sense of the word.

The same is true regarding home breeding; sometimes a keeper of a pet decides to get into breeding simply for the money he or she can earn from puppies, using this as a supplementary income to the family budget.

Money rules our world. That is obvious and beyond question. Feeding, treating, and calling the vet in an emergency all costs money. Responsibility is expensive. When deciding about a litter, what really matters is if you care about doing what is best for the pups or only about the potential income. When someone views breeding purely as a financial activity, ignoring the needs and interests of dogs, it causes a huge animal welfare issue, with many serious problems including overproducing.

The Carelessness Factor

From the point of view of the dogs, mating is not about money. Dogs mate by instinct and not for the money it can earn. This leads to the biggest animal welfare problem caused by and experienced in society: the lack of neutering of dogs.

People tend to be empathetic and, as a male myself, I can sympathize with people being nervous about the idea of having the genitals of their dog removed. On the other hand, what people tend not to think about is the effect this sort of thinking can have.

Unplanned dog pregnancy is a major cause of the overpopulation of dogs, causing massive numbers of stray dogs. Who has never seen puppies left unattended in a cardboard box in the woods, alleys, parkways, wherever?

This type of accident, based on carelessness, is definitely significant. The bitch is in heat, males approach and the newborn puppies arrive in a few short weeks. The same, simple story with the same unwanted, and most of the time, complicated results.

Neutering dogs and spaying bitches is really important in the fight not only against overpopulation, but reducing stray dogs. That is the reason many charities run awareness campaigns about this topic, and many responsible professional breeders reject selling dogs as pets without them first being neutered. Luckily, many shelters also only put dogs up for adoption after neutering, too.

The Battle No One Can Win—This Way

Shelters are full of dogs waiting to be adopted; the dog-breeding scene is full of puppies waiting to be bought. It’s like a competition: which one to take home and from where.

But what about all those dogs coming from the ‘shadows’ through irresponsible home breeding; puppy farms producing massive numbers of litters with commercial intentions only, the same way others manufacture clothes? These people are not included in any analysis of the problem as there is no exact data on them. These situations largely go undetected, because what you can’t perceive, you can’t fight. That is the reason it is usually the registered breeder who is under attack in these issues of overpopulation. Why breed more dogs when the shelters are full? Simple thinking declares immediately that it is the breeders who are the ones responsible for all these as, for most people, the only two participants in the story are the shelters and the breeders.

As a comment—but not an unimportant one—shelters are usually full of mutts. These are dogs which are certainly not coming from breeders. You can be sure about this even without any statistics.

What you can see transparently, you can manipulate, you can control, you can alter to make a change in the pattern. Sadly, the animal welfare and protection strategy in some countries is to ban registered breeding in order to reduce the number of abandoned dogs, just simply because it is a regulation that can be conducted with a really lucrative and immediate result

Imagine this situation: first of all, breeders are visible as I have previously stated many times. The person themselves, the litters themselves are all registered, and where any sort of activity occurs in contravention of animal welfare regulations, the breeder can be held responsible. But a breeder who really does that as their true profession considers how the market changes, and they don’t overproduce, and as the dogs are registered, in case any get abandoned, they can certainly be traced back. But this is far from the case with home breeding and puppy farming.

Secondly, just imagine a world where registered breeding is banned. Even with no more breeders on the radar, it does not mean that the demand for puppies decreases and, additionally, it has no effect on the ‘twilight zone’ of home breeding and illegal puppy farming. Moreover, the more transparent the process of breeding, the fewer problems; and the less support for registered breeding, the larger the number of untraceable sources becomes. What about those you cannot see and for this reason cannot effect? If you want to win a battle, you need to find and target the real enemy, not home in on those few who are easy to recognize.

I do hope that everyone agrees that it’s not only important to encourage responsible ownership of pets, but also giving life to a litter demands just as much responsibility. If you want to decrease the number of dogs on the streets and in shelters, you do not only need to rehome them, but you must be sure that there is no resupply. In this struggle for the sake of dogs, it is absolutely essential to see that promoting responsible breeding has a positive effect on the doggy world in the long run. Otherwise it will only trigger greater and greater overpopulation issues, causing more and more abandoned dogs that need to be rescued and secured.

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Posted by ralbee on Jan 9 2016. Filed under Current Articles, Editorial, Featured. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. Both comments and pings are currently closed.