What Do You Do About Ferals?

Back in the "good old days," American cities paid children to catch street dogs and then these dogs were bundled into iron cages and drowned off the end of the dock in order to reduce the spread of rabies and dog bites

Today, we are more civilized, and we pay professional dog catchers to round up the dogs, and then we spend scores of millions of tax dollars to subsidize the "humane" movement to kill over two million dogs a year.

Thanks to the subsidized efficiency of the killing machine called the "humane" movement, feral dogs are now pretty far and few between in the U.S., Canada, and most of western Europe.

Of course, there are still lots of feral cats which are spreading disease and killing a billion birds a year. Here, trap-spay/neuter-and-release has proven a total failure and a more concerted program of trap-and-kill is clearly needed, both to end the cycle of misery for cats, but also to end the cycle of disease and bird killing that feral cats engender.

Over at the feral dog blog, they note that feral dogs and rabies are still a serious public health problem in much of the developing world. That excellent blog recommends the "two sack" method of humane capture, though what happens to a dog after it is captured is not made explicit (hint, I do not think too many are "rehomed" to elderly couples with gated gardens in the suburbs).

In Australia, feral dogs and dingoes are simply called in and shot or poisoned as if they were wolves.

The latest news is from Russia where feral dogs in Kiev have gotten to be a big enough problem that poisoning and shooting campaigns have taken to the Internet.  Sick stuff, but any sicker than paying the "humane" movement to round up and kill dogs on the public dime?

Well, yes... but not by much. In a country where the government does not subsidize the "humane" movement to round up and kill, the locals may take care of the problem themselves.

 

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