Burdening the owner
Today after dinner I randomly went for a walk. On my way, I spotted a dog when she barked near a house beside main road. As I turned on light, a shopkeeper nearby also arrived there. We moved closer and saw there were five cute, healthy and beautiful puppies with the mother. A sack was also placed nearby, sitting on it, kids were glaring at us. This dog must be a pet. She had done what was needed to her owner—a male puppy. In return she had enduring consequences on the road with five pups without food and shelter.
It was almost a month later, of an afternoon, I had been there while poisoning stray dogs and see them dying. This excruciating situation appealed my conscience where lives were reduced into nothing just to limit dogs’ penetration in a village.
This is also a fact that the penetration of stray dogs has crossed beyond the territory of human settlements into adrakh—the upland uninhabited by men where families stay only during summer season for transhumance for a month or two. One wonders as locals testified to have seen five stray dogs turned out to be wild (in adrakh). For the last few years stray dogs have also started eating domesticated animals. Few days back three sheep were killed by stray dogs in my own neighborhood.
A couple of days before a video clip being shared on Facebook, many of you might have watched it, where a toddler from a home crawls into the road during night time. Stray dogs appear one after another start attacking the child. I couldn’t watch the complete video to see what had happened with that child but we could guess the fate.
The increasing population of stray and pet dogs has consequences in public spaces and neighborhoods. There is always a fear of dog remains while commuting where pet or stray dogs are out there in village. Dog-biting cases, though has been limited, attacking travellers or killing of livestock has become a common story. Some places (woodland) have become no go areas.
Protecting animals especially dogs and limiting their population in neighborhood and public spaces has also become a daunting task. It primarily depends on local community in our area. The local leadership may also play an important role. Community volunteering with the help of concerned department in the area to better help monitoring and tracking those who burden public spaces with dogs along offspring especially after having male puppy for himself and others.
If there is any organization working in Chitral to protect animals’ lives and health needed to come up for coordination and support government department with the facilities to be used for limiting stray dogs outside in public spaces.
The humanely measures are demanding in our area to limit the population of stray dogs in public spaces and neighborhoods, and making those people to burden the responsibility of the pets they left in bazaar. Strong community leadership and networking across an area through volunteers with the help of police and municipal authorities may have a wider reach, intervention, surveillance, regulatory power and authority.
