Spent some time thinking on what should be the long term policies on handling the symbiosis of stray animals within our society.
The idea is that community animals are a unique aspect of our society and the culture we follow suggest to live in harmony. Hence the solutioning must be the one most suitable for us and not just any solution. A solution out of âour way of solvingâ the problem would ultimately be a bad solution.
- Adoption Policy: Defines what adoption means and why should someone do it or otherwise. Incentives for adoption of local breeds and much higher incentives for adopting strays with medical issues.
- Ownership Policy: Ideally from the lens of our culture, âownershipâ over a living soul sounds sketchy. However since foreign breeds canât really fall under the definition of adoption, their would be an ownership market. Ownership of foreign breed could be luxury taxed.
- Local Guardian Policy: Since all strays cannot be adopted, there still has to be a guardian. Each locality can have a group of guardians who act as guarantors of the strays in that area. They ensure the strays are not food, water, shelter, companionship, protection stressed.
The local guardian policy is a feedback to ensure the governmental mechanisms of vaccination, protection, etc are not corrupted. Government has to build infra and services to aid & work with them. Local guardian is not a legal responsibility but more of good faith based.
Rabies is critical. But its not just rabies that we need to solve for, a group of dogs chasing a child for fun and the child ending up falling in a ditch and getting hurt is equally harmful. Hence training and sensitisation of each individual stray is important.
Every time a new pup is born, it should be slowly trained, it should be made comfortable with humans and children. Maybe potty train the strays as well. All this can only happen if every single stray is tagged and has a local guardian.
Our culture is of symbiosis. We live with community animals and I hope to see a future that is well managed with these animals. Another thought is of a massive infra and restricting strays in schools. But any form of restrictions how good wonât likely keep these animals happy.