A "DOGS" CITY'S MASTER PLAN

Stray dogs nowadays have a new word to represent them, ’MENACE’. People may be divided into two groups, both emotionally activated, one driven by love and affection, the other by hate and repulsion. But for both types, and especially for those who are emotionally unattached to animals, there is a logical discourse & paradigm that may be looked at keeping all emotional arguments aside, to solve the newly named problem called – THE DOG MENACE. To start with, if we go back in human history, through various civilizations which succeeded each other, there has never been a period when the entire human population ceased to exist altogether in an area or region, unless guided by nature’s forces or inaccessible physical boundaries. For example, if someone were to eliminate the population of humans in a city, as was attempted in Japan during the World War 2, can the entire population be destroyed completely and for ever? No! Of course it can not be!
Any species is it human or animal cannot be forced out of existence altogether, no matter however large the scale of destruction is; and ANYTHING that MOVES and that has the intelligence even to the IQ level of a mosquito will not remain stationed in one place. Like we humans do, they will naturally move towards a better habitat and a territory of their own
Hence, the first inference that can be drawn is that NO SPECIES CAN BE PREVENTED FROM EXISTING AND NO LIVING CAN BE PREVENTED FROM MOVING AND INHABITATING EMPTY AND MORE COMFORTABLE AREAS, unless physical boundaries are made, or in cases of dogs, are made to understand signboards of “no entry”.
So the problem and solution that may lie is not with the existence of dogs but with the over population of any species. This is similar to the problem that metropolitan cities are facing, where the population of humans becomes alarmingly more as compared to the resources and space available. To solve human over population problem do we kill humans? No we don’t!! We control human population by PLANNING A CITY properly. Being an architect and a planner I can call it in technical terms the DENSITY OF LANDUSES of an area or city. In planning a city we decide how many people must be allowed to live in a square km of area on an average and what infrastructure can be provided to sustain the population planned. That also does not mean that we literally kill the rest or throw out the people who come thereafter. On the other hand, we implement the theoretical concept by a practical INDIRECT approach & solution, like controlling the influx of people by laws & methods of not allowing people to build on roads, pavements, common areas, etc. Hence, the human over population can be controlled by proper planning of the City; by an instrument we call the MASTER PLAN. And if the master plan fails, the human city faces havoc too. It is but natural. We don’t blame the humans in that case, we blame the planning.
Similarly in case of animals, dogs in particular, we cannot kill or keep throwing them out of localities because, as earlier concluded, this is not possible to achieve. So, as we plan our cities we have to solve the dog problem in a similar way, i.e. by deciding how many dogs live in a locality, how their multiplication is controlled and how dogs from outside the locality are prevented from entering the locality, i.e. a Density plan for them as well and its implementation strategy.
This can be achieved easily, as dogs are by nature territorial and do not allow other dogs to enter their “home or local habitat”, i.e. if we are able to provide the community dogs with all the ingredients of a “home or habitat” in its correct plan and proportions. This means two things. Firstly, making them comfortable in the area by feeding them properly, taking care of their medical needs and not providing them with garbage dumps where they can hunt for more food. By feeding them properly we can control their behaviour and can make them our guards and can in a way domesticate them. They would readily adjust themselves to the people of the locality and would accept them as their masters. Whereas if they feed on their own on garbage they need not look upon us for survival and will by nature form herds to protect their garbage dumps against anybody that threatens it, which is when we face problems like it happened in Bangalore or Hyderabad. It is highly logical that the way to a dogs mind and heart is through its stomach. If we can control that, we can make a dog do anything for us, anything at all. There are innumerable examples of that all over the world. And thereafter, to control the numbers increasing manifold, we implement the Animal Birth Control Program.
Thus the second inference that can be drawn is— THE PROBLEM OF STRAY DOGS CAN BE PERMANANTLY SOLVED by " ABC (Animal Birth Control) program along with adoption & providing a well PLANNED HABITAT for them, by domesticating them, so they guard and coexists with us rather than cause harm to us. Dogs can themselves Control the DENSITY & INFLUX of more dogs in a locality, thereafter. "
Within this solution an important practice has to be adopted in the ABC Program .The program will have to be run in a city in the same localities time and again, at least twice or thrice, because there is always a re-mixing of dogs between localities up to 20-30%, since they are not so hostile to share space with fellow dogs that may add in small numbers. So to ensure that no dog is left unvaccinated and unneutered, a cycle of ABC Program has to be created. Also, since the average life span of a dog is between 8-10 years, the time lag between cycles of implementation of the program become substantially wide thus making implementation very easy and effective .The same is not the case with killing because when dogs are killed in mass, dogs from other nearby areas migrate to this “dog free vacuum” within days and the situation becomes what it previously had been. Killing thus is like going round in a circle which has no finishing point, and till the day a device to kill all dogs simultaneously throughout the world is invented, like a deadly sound wave, killing will remain no solution to the problem. It will only aggravate the problem.
But, we can not forget the fact that, ABC Program in itself has been flawless except for one reason — wrong or inefficient implementation of the program. There are two practices which lead to the failure of the program. Firstly the neutered dogs being rehabilitated and left back in new areas i.e. not in the areas from where they were picked up for ABC Program. This leads to an adhoc implementation of the program, whose aim is to cover each locality systematically and not to carry the program in a haphazard way. Hence rehabilitation in the same area is very important. The second reason for the failure of the program lies with the practice of conducting the operation of neutering in shelters which are home to many diseased dogs. The healthy neutered dogs catch infection in these shelters and thus the Post Operative Survival Rate comes out to be highly low. The localities left vacant after the demise of these healthy dogs are occupied by dogs which may be diseased and unneutered, which is again the point from where it all started. Hence, an inefficient ABC program is as good as increasing numbers by mass killing and may result in more dogs in that locality.
Thus to make the ABC Program flawless, separate facilities need to be constructed for these operations and the dogs have to be rehabilitated in their respective original localities at all costs. Such a flawless ABC Program will effectively help control the dog population. Also a planned favorable habitat for the survival of the existing dogs will end the hostility these dogs feel to their existence. They would easily coexist with humans eliminating threat of any kind to the latter from their species.........................