Feeding with responsible management

If you want to feed, sterilise. If not, don't feed at all.

A mental argument that plays over and again in the minds of animal controllers.

In our times on the streets with the caregivers, we have witnessed the hordes of dogs that emerge from the bushes, under the cars, from the drains when the caregiver's car inches in. The familiar sound of the engine or the mere sight of the car changes the landscape: from a quiet street of tranquil and rustling dead leaves to a dramatic stage of eager, excited dogs hopping in delight.

Yet, truth be told, there are many we cannot touch nor even get close to in an arm's reach. Most shy from us when we encroach in a radius of, say, a few metres. Or gingerly stand behind a guarded space of imaginary barrier. I can safely say, most tackle the food, only after we'd left.

We'd wondered to each other if the caregivers are doing the right thing by even feeding these dogs that they or we can almost never get hold of. One camp posits that feeding, without actively sterilising 80% of the population, only causes the dogs to become healthier and make them breed faster. The numbers proliferate so rapidly.

Another camp claims feeding in one area strategically, even without actively sterilising the dogs, lures the dogs away from more densely populated places and reduces humans-strays conflict and minimizes potential disturbances, such as messing up trash cans, street dogs can cause.

To other animal advocates, it is through feeding that one is able to get close to the wary stray dogs. Once trust is gained of the caregiver, it's much easier to get hold of the target dogs and send them for sterilisation.

The 'responsible management' package in Singapore includes sterilisation + vaccination + licensing + microchipping, but reality has it that we often fall short of a few items, even when we can get hold of the dogs, simply because we lack the funds to carry them out or that the supposed owners or farms are unable or unwilling to license the dogs. Licensing is a tag of legitimacy, a liability they do not wish to have.

Recently, I encountered a lady who wanted to save a dog she's been tending to from a unit (lest he's surrendered to SPCA) and literally demanded for a heavensent landed home to take him in. None that I know of at the moment, I told her.

When asked if the dog's sterilised, she said no. Which means for the one-and-half years she's entrusted the dog to the supposed owner, neither she nor the owners had bothered to sterilise a dog they could get their hands on.

That said, with the limited resources these caregivers are armed with, I wouldn't suggest being harsh to them, as some might condone, by removing the dogs they feed without helping them in some way to better manage their charges (for instance, sterilising and microchipping their dogs).

For the work we're doing, it defeats the purpose to extinguish their passion and discount, altogether, their kindness in caring for the strays, by declining to help them or leaving them in the lurch of their struggles. With owners, with authorities.

For now, STERILISATION tops the list in responsible management that complements an individual's feeding and caring for his or her strays.