The Value in what we do

While others may see what we do a conflict to what they do, I see it as a means to one same end, i.e., population control of stray animals.

Culling serves to remove animals from a given location for a period of time. Relief on the faces of complainants that the 'naughty' dog is no longer in the area, hooray to the disappearance of dogs that poo outside my factory. But what most fail to realise is, culling is but a temporary measure.

When you remove a group of dogs from a location, it becomes void for some time, but do not forget that dogs can be nomadic animals with the ability to move from one territory to another, and claim territories as well. Unless a place is totally fenced up and shut out of intruders, this same location becomes repopulated with new dogs and newer ones who add to the pack.

In reducing and managing stray dog population, you need to first understand how the dogs work. Their social dynamics.

Sure, culling is a method, but sterilisation is a more effective method that yields more long-term benefits and is more humane. To control its nation's burgeoning population, the Chinese govt. discouraged births and is even said to have enforced coerced abortion or fertility incapacitation. Not kill the humans so that they won't reproduce.

Same goes for stray animals. Tailor these self-same methods to a different, voiceless target audience. Animals don't know family planning policies, neither do they know how to stop at one. Hence, sterilise them. It's as straighforward as that. No need for educated guesswork.

And that's the value of STERILISATION.

While farm owners or tenants bemoan that the dogs are still around, they got to realise the value of what we do, i.e., sterilising as many as we can catch. So that in the next few years that their farm is still around and their businesses are to continue, our sterilising of the dogs in and around their premises do not contribute to unsterilised females getting impregnated and bearing litter after litter of puppies that enter their compound, separated from outside by flimsy fences and open gates.

While animal welfare groups help the animals, they are helping these very people who run their businesses. Help the animals and you help the humans.

The government desires a controlled stray population, or ideally, a stray-free situation. But what they need to realise is the value of what welfare groups and individuals around are doing: sterilising as many as they can. Sterilisation is a method that does not conflict with culling, and until the parties come to terms with this, and decide to redirect their energies to and invest their monies in sterilisation as a method, we can go about tackling a longstanding problem with a method that, simply, doesn't work.

If Strategy A fails, then please consider Strategy B. It's right before your eyes.