How to solve the stray dog problems in Taiwan
It’s quite common for most of us to see some wild dogs walking around the street, looking for food to eat, or just lying in the middle of the road. According to a survey done by the Council of Agriculture, Executive Yuan, in 2018, the number of the stray dogs was over 140,000 on our street in Taiwan. It seems like a very astonishing number for us. Furthermore, the fertility of the stray dogs is also unimaginable too. Based on a study done by the Taiwan Animal Protection Party, we can know that, on average, for one female dog, they can give birth to the number of 6~10 now-born dogs at one time. Besides, for one year, they will have the fertility for two times. That means, for one female dog in one year, they will give birth to at least the number of 12 new-born dogs a year. And if we suppose that half amount of the stray dogs on the street is female. In other words, we will have about 7,000 stray dogs as females. Then, we will have approximately the number of 840,000 new-born dogs in Taiwan for one single year. Consequently, we can know that it is a very serious issue for our society in Taiwan. Since we have this large number of stray dogs on our street, it is our priority to tackle this problem.
According to a research conducted by Hsu, Liu& Serpell(2003), they’ve found that there are three main reasons that contributed to the recent increase in the number of stray dogs. And these reasons include: the low rate of neutering, the easy availability for those no-cost puppies, and the tendency to allow owned dogs free access to the outdoors. As a result, there are lots of things for us to do in decreasing the amount of stray dogs. I conducted a survey asking the respondents whether the stray dog issues do cause some problems in their daily life. The result showed that 25 out of 30 answered “yes” for having this kind of problem (Figure 1). Furthermore, over 93% of people think that we need to take some actions to deal with the stray dog problems undoubtedly. In terms of the stray dog problems, we can divide them into 3 parts respectively: noisy problems, safety problems, and the disease problems. As a result, not only the government but also ourselves, need to take some actions to solve these problems that are mentioned below.
Figure 1
The first solution is that the government implements euthanasia on those stray dogs if they stay in the shelter for more than? 12 days. Due to the large amount of the stray dogs, the fastest and also the most effective way for the government to do is to have the euthanasia implementation on those stray dogs. However, this solution is not feasible at all. Due to the fact that this solution only aims to decrease the numbers of stray dogs, not to tackle the problems that are caused by the stray dogs. Moreover, the society may think that this solution was inhuman for stray dogs. Over these years, movies such as Twelve Nights, which was released in 2013, called for a concept: adopt, and don't abandon, on those people who have pets or people who want to keep the pets in the future. From this movie, we can know how cruel it is, in terms of the environment for those stray dogs to stay in the shelter. In addition, because of this movie, the public starts to raise awareness of the stray dog issues and think that the government should stop this kind of the implementation on the stray dog. Fortunately, the government had stopped this implementation in Taiwan in 2017. Therefore, we can know that this solution of implementing euthanasia on those stray dogs is not feasible since it is very inhuman.
The second solution is the trap-neuter-return method, and that is the TNR method. According to Chang, Chu, and Chen(2014),they indicated that Instead of implementing the euthanasia method, what we can do is to look for the solution about how can we prevent these innocent dogs from becoming stray dogs. Also, base on the study done by Kartal & Rowan (2018), we can know that the most efficient way to decrease the number of stray dogs and also to improve the welfare of human beings is to have the sterilization on those stray gods.The purpose of this TNR method is to decrease the number of new-born dogs by having the neutering on those stray dogs. After neutering, those stray dogs will be returned back to their original habitation, so the behavior of the stray dogs fighting for the territory will become alleviated. Furthermore, after they have the neutering surgery, their temperaments will become tamer than before. As a result, the possibility for the stray dogs to attack people will decrease obviously. And we can deal with both the noisy problem and safety problem, since they will not be in heat anymore and will not make loud noise such as dogs bark comparatively. However, although it can solve the noise and safety problems, the disease problems still remain unsolved in this TNR method. Consequently, this solution is not feasible either.
The last solution is the TNVR method. Compared with the second solution, it seems that there is only one step added in this solution, and that is V, Vaccination. By having the vaccination on those stray dogs, we can solve the disease problems as well. Because some diseases such as rabies that can infect not only animals but also human beings, we can know that it is a very serious problem. But if we can have the vaccination on the stray dogs, we can avoid the disease from spreading. Nonetheless, in the survey that I have conducted, the findings showed that for most of us, though we might have heard about the TNVR method, 57% of respondents still had no idea about how the TNVR actually functions(Figure 2). So maybe what we need to do first is to strengthen the education on those people who are not conscious of the severity of this stray dog issue. As long as more and more people are aware of this stray dog issues and become more familiar with the TNVR method, the TNVR method can be considered as the best solution for solving the stray dog problems in our society definitely.
figure 2
After I’ve mentioned the 3 solutions above: the euthanasia implementation, the TNR method, and the TNVR method, we can easily know that the last solution, TNVR method is the best solution to solve all the problems that are caused by stray dog issues. Even though there are still many controversies about how to solve the stray dog problems in Taiwan, as long as we have a better comprehension of the stray dog problems and then combine with the practice of the TNVR, we can have fewer stray dogs and some related problems. As a result, we need the government to establish a policy about the TNVR and to have a better environment for both humans and stray dogs.
References
1. The Council of Agriculture, Executive Yuan (2018). 全國共15萬流浪狗，農委會：儘速絕育.
Retrieved from
https://www.nownews.com/news/20190718/3508393/
2. Taiwan Animal Protection Party (2019) 流浪動物問題的真正解方！
Retrieved from
3. Hsu, Y., Liu Severinghaus, L., & Serpell, J. A. (2003). Dog keeping in Taiwan: its contribution to the problem of free-roaming dogs. Journal of Applied Animal Welfare Science, 6(1), 1-23.
4. 張嘉妤， 張曇欣， 朱珮馨， 陳慧心， 張智涵 (2014) 台灣流浪動物現況探討
5. Kartal, T., & Rowan, A. N. (2018). Stray dog population management. Field manual for small animal medicine, 15-28.
