Stray Dog Menace in Big Cities

[jonahpach]

Hello fellow brothers in Arms!

Have been reading a lot of stray dog incidents around the country the last of which is quite touching : (Article pasted at the bottom of the post)

I grew up in pune city during the late 60's and early 90's where we could callup the municipal dog shooter if there was a dog menace in a neighbourhood. What happened to those Municipal Dog shooters? dont we have them any more? Or has PETA shut them up for good??

We had a similar (but fortunately not fatal) experience last year in one of our districts in Mizoram. The Deputy Commissioner immediately ordered the extermination of all stray and unleashed dogs.. Hardly had this programme been initiated when 'You know who' from PETA called up the DC and had the entire program cancelled.

I am an animal lover myself, but I cannot and will not tolerate loss of an innocent child at the cost of so called "Love for Animals' Maneka Gandhi and her ilk should be brought up to task for the loss of this and so many other innocent lives.

Maybe IFG could be more vocal about such incidents.

Jonah

Dogs maul boy
[ 1 Mar, 2007 2316hrs ISTTIMES NEWS NETWORK ]


RSS Feeds| SMS NEWS to 8888 for latest updates

BANGALORE: Even before the city could recover from the brutal killing of eightyear-old Sridevi by stray dogs in Chandra Layout, a little boy was mauled by 15 dogs in BEML township on Wednesday.

Four-and-half-year-old Manjunath was playing hide-and-seek with his friends when the dogs attacked him, caught him in their jaws and dragged him across the open ground.

Within seconds, the murderous pack had almost severed his neck. The last words of this little boy were "neeru neeru (water water)".

Neighbours tried in vain to save him. In the next nine hours, Manjunath was pronounced dead after a team of surgeons battled and failed to save his life.

The surgeons tried to salvage what was left of the child's mutilated neck - windpipe, foodpipe and arteries - but failed.

He was brought to paediatric casualty of Manipal Hospital at about 8 pm and he had numerous lacerated injuries on the face, upper and lower limbs along with a massive tear in the wind pipe, which was split into two.

"This was causing him suffocation and profuse bleeding," said Dr Joseph Xavier, a cardio thoracic surgeon, who led the surgery.

A team of nine specialists including ENT, cardiac, vascular, neuro and plastic surgeons were rushed to handle the case. The operation started at 11 pm and continued till 3 am.

Since the child had lost a lot of blood, the doctors tried to control the bleeding by keeping him at a low temperature to stop the circulation for the time; an operation to control the bleeding was undertaken.

Also life support system to maintain his low blood pressure and the failing heart was provided. Recalling what happened minutes earlier, the child's father Maheshwara M C, an instructor at the welding training centre, BEML, said: "My son was calling me just a few minutes earlier to play with him,which I normally do. I told him I will have a bath first and then join him. But by the time I could have a bath some neighbours were screaming that dogs have bitten Manju. I rushed down from the first floor of our house. Manju was meanwhile taken to the nearby BEML hospital. The child was then rushed to Manipal Hospital and doctors emerged out of the operation theatre at about 3 am to tell us that the child is dead." Manjunath's mother Annapurna is too shattered to speak. The incident has shaken the neighbourhood. Says a neighbour Lokesh N: "Manju was calling out to my daughter Spoorti who was one of his best friends to play with him. My daughter was asleep, otherwise it could have been my daughter." .... etc..

[mundaire]

Jonah, I read this article too... made my blood boil!

[Grumpy]

Our sympathy goes out to the childrens families obviously but my reaction to this story is the same as Mundaires - extreme anger. I also am an animal lover and have four dogs and a Ferret but I am aware and sensible enough to realise that allowing dogs to stray, breed ferally and form packs is a surefire way of creating a very dangerous situation - they amount to Wolf packs without any fear of man. The only way to deal with this situation is to destroy the animals before further injuries and fatalities occur.
Animal rights activists should consider that humans too are animals and also have rights. Dangerous behaviour in humans is punished to protect society. Animals should be treated the same.
As regards the bizarre reactions to animal rights by some people who need to get their priorities sorted out my favourite story in this theme concerns the feral cat population in Wisconsin and the response of the local `cat huggers` to a rapidly increasing population .............
- I`ll leave Mehul to develope this.

[dev]

This menace is becoming a real danger. My Tae kwon do instructor had his pet siamese cat killed by feral dogs that came into his garden. He called blue cross etc. but no help has come in. Then last sunday the same pack attacked his other cat. Luckily this one is the size of Garfield and managed to survive till my master rushed in. It has been badly bitten in the legs and abdomen. The scary part is that this pack has evolved a hunting strategy that seems very effective. Thanks to Peta, all the neighbourhood children may anyday be at risk. I think its high time we pulled out some solution like maybe capturing and sending the whole lot to the lady. Maybe she'll be able to
scream downdoggy fast enough .

Regards,

Dev

p.s. i think sensei is sharpening his katana at the moment.

[danish21]

I have an idea of business for indian government... why don't they catch all the stray dogs and supply them to korea where eating them is not prohibited.

Danish

Too gory for the weak hearted.Hence the editing.-Moderator.

[Sakobav]

Such pack of dogs need to be exterminated. There were similar cases reported out of Punjab last year.

[shahid]

The solution is simple. Either Mrs. Maneka ( Gandhi if still valid ) takes care of every street dog in India and keeps them safetly caged and well fed in her house, or else these animals have to be destroyed because they are a danger to the common public.

[mundaire]

In spite of such incidents, I doubt if they'll do anything at all!

For example, there have been several incidents of stray cattle goring people and causing traffic accidents in the Delhi/ NCR region. The MCD then offered a bounty to everyone who captured and brought in each head of cattle... hundreds were captured on the first day itself, but then the MCD had no place to hold them and refused to accept the cattle from people bringing them in... Anyhow the long and short of it was, the bounty was not paid out, and the captured cattle was released back to owners on their paying fines (bribes?)... the situation is still the way it was...

Cheers!
Abhijeet

[shahid]

I have a small solution in Patna. If any stray cattle ventures into my campus, mu guards capture it and milk it. When the owner comes to demand it he pays Rs. 20 to the home guards who guard the house. This Rs. 20 is used by them to purchase sugar. Rice from our fields is given free to the home guards anyway, so there is plenty of Kheer to be has anytime in the home guard picket tent. Keeps these boys happy.

[mundaire]

Good idea, but doubt it can be made to work in Delhi!

[Yaj]

I would like to beg to differ here!I definitely would support humane elimination of that particular pack but to tar every other stray dog with the same brush is extreme in my opinion.
Most strays are quite friendly and timid towards human beings and avoid confrontation.Any aggressive dogs with a history of attacks on humans should be eliminated but i think for the others an aggressive sterilisation programme is the answer not the half hearted attempts most municipalities are undertaking now.
I dont think eliminating everything we dont approve of or doesnt fit into our scheme of things is a very humane attitude.
Adopting some of these strays/ placing them in good homes may do some good too but most of us are so obsessed with exotic foreign dogs that their indian cousins are just classified as vermin.
I am glad to see so many of us are dog lovers.
Regards,
Yaj.

[Sujay]

Most strays are quite friendly and timid towards human beings and avoid confrontation.

Friendly till the time they form a pack.

I have to shut my car windows everytime to prevent dogs jumping in ; after late hours in office. And the way they chase my car ; they mean serious business. These are the ones who idle away during day time. And people getting mauled ( not bitten) is a regular affair in Hyderabad.

[Ranjeet Singh]

Most strays are quite friendly and timid towards human beings and avoid confrontation.I am glad to see so many of us are dog lovers.

Well Yaj, you could agree that once a dog is in a pack then it can chase vehicles (read bikes) causing accidents. A individual dog can rarely be aggressive.However in a pack its a different story. Knowing that rabies is a incurable disease and finding homes for abandoned/stray dogs though a noble idea , pretty hard to implement..Elimination(put to sleep-humanely) would work better

What can I say love for foreign breeds I myself have a german shepherd at home...

Regards
Ranjeet

[mehulkamdar]

Gentlemen,

I love dogs - I brought mine to the US with me when I moved. But, if people are getting killed by stray dog packs then some urgent action does need to be taken. The PFA/PETA people may whine and wail. In the end, human lives are more important than animal ones.

My friend Grumpy has raised a very important example of what happened in Wisconsin about two years ago when the state Forest service found that cats were almost on the verge of wiping out the bird population, especially small indigenous bird species. They came out with a proposal to mandate that any hunter who saw cats in the forests while out hunting rabbits or other game was encouraged to humanely destroy the cats. The PETA types made a big noise, first coming up with the canard that killing cats would cause the rat population to explode and wipe out the state's crops. Then, when this was disproved, they came up with the idea that it would be better to humanely sterilise the cats instead of shooting them. The simple question was, how does anyone capture, sterilise and release an estimated 8 million cats? Who would pay for this kind of operation? Surely not PETA - a little known fact is that PETA spends less than 2% of the millions and millions of dollars that it receives on animals. The bulk of the money goes on its propaganda efforts. In the end, sanity prevailed and Wisconsin does have a policy of encouraging hunters to humanely destroy any cats they see in the wild.

Sadly, I am not optimistic about what is happening in India. Maneka Gandhi and her lot would much rather see a thousand people killed than have one mad dog put down.

[Mack The Knife]

I'm in complete agreement with Yaj on this subject.

Mack The Knife