Stray Dogs on the Rise!

The number of stray dogs around our building has gone down as the mornings and nights are getting colder - by colder I mean 10C. Some dogs still choose to hide beneath parked cars for shelter but most have gone elsewhere.

During the last couple of months we were feeding milk and roti to one of the dogs and her new litter. The mother liked us but she was extremely territorial. She constantly had to fight off other adult dogs from getting away with her family's food. Watching the adults go at each other could be pretty scary.
The mother always made sure her eight puppies had their fill of the food first; only when they were done would she indulge in the leftovers. Anyhow, one of the pups got run over by a car in the parking lot a couple of weeks back. The mom was extremely depressed, she was sulking for days and made weeping sounds whenever she'd see us.

I haven't seen the remaining pups in a while. I wonder what state their in, they could've starved to death by now or fallen victim to other speeding cars. Who knows.

There were some interesting facts published in the Ahmedabad Mirror today about dogs:

• There are 300,000 stray dogs in the city
• Only 61,000 dogs were sterilised in the last four years
• Over 200 dog bites are reported every single day in Ahmedabad
• In the last six years, 30 people have died of dog bites

And yet, the Ahmedebad Municipal Corporation has yet to come up with a feasible plan of action to combat the issue.

The stray dog problem is prevalent all over India. There is no law requiring these numbers to be reported to government authorities so it's difficult to get a proper estimate. But it's believed that at least 50% of the world's rabies cases occur in India.