By Aishwarya Baidar, Apekshya Basnet, Barsha Baral
The agonized howling of dogs can be heard almost every day while strolling around the roads of kathmandu. People pass by, indifferent to the everyday sight of stray dogs getting hit by trucks. As soon as the trucks pass, the dogs stand up, their legs injured. Worse still, sometimes they don’t stand up at all.
This scenario shows the life of stray dogs in the streets of Nepal. Kathmandu is home to more than 22,500 street dogs who are commonly afflicted with injuries from collisions with cars, starvation, and open maggot wounds. Rarely are they provided with proper care, and more often than not they are left to die in pain. The Kathmandu City Government used to poison more than 10000 street dogs a year with strychnine in an attempt to control the street dog population. This horrific form of poisoning throws the dogs into violent seizures for up to 9 hours before they die. However, the government stopped this practice after outcry from animal rights groups.
“The increase of road accidents with stray dogs is mainly due to the incapability of government to manage waste materials,” said Dr. Bidhur Piya, a veterinarian at the Kathmandu Animal Treatment Centre in Budhanilkantha. Dr. Piya has been putting his love for animals to work at the Centre as a general veterinarian or the past nine years. Every month, the Centre rescues 50 to 55 dogs with the aim to provide a shelter for them.
According Dr. Piya,, street dogs are found mainly at the places where they have chances of getting food. For the dogs in Kathmandu, this food comes in the form of unmanaged garbage dumps. Stopping the practice of dumping garbage on the streets is the first step that needs to be taken to check the street dog menace. In addition, he also strongly believes that people should recognize that having a pet is a responsibility, a committed relationship between the owner and the pet, and a promise given by owners to their pets when they are first taken in.
Dr. Piya further said that the Nepali Government has not played any role to support of animal welfare centers. “All of the medicine and funding for the welfare of the dogs comes from countries like America, Europe and Australia,” he stated. He added that the number of street dogs is increasing more than ever due to irresponsible pet owners.
“The Government only provided us with 100-200 vaccines on the last Rabies Day, apart from that I don’t think they have aided us in any way. But I plea to them to provide us with an isolated location so that other people will not get disturbed,” Dr. Piya added, “We have had a meeting with other NGOs that work for animal welfare, such as the Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, Kate Clinton’s animal centre at Kapan and other centers that helps abandoned cattle to work collaboratively.
The animal welfare shelter established back in 2004 by Jan Shelter is now home to dogs that were previously left unchecked in the streets of Kathmandu. Apart from that, Sneha’s Care is one of the largest animal welfare charities of Nepal. It protects the street dogs from torture and cruelty of any kind. They provide professional medical and humane care to injured, sick and abandoned dogs and other street animals.
There are also many smaller organizations and individuals working for animal welfare without government aid. Manisha Pandey who is a member of PETA, the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, and founder of ANGELS, A Network of Guardians Giving Extra Love to the Strays is one of them. “Animals rights should not just be a philosophy, it should be a social movement that challenges society’s traditional views that all non-human animals exist solely for human use,” Pandey said, “As PETA founder Ingrid Newkirk has said, when it comes to pain, love, joy, loneliness and fear, a rat is a pig, a pig is a dog, a dog is a boy, and each values his or her life and fights the knife.”