He feels that stray dogs are the single biggest menace to society! He adds that they carry diseases, dirty up places and are harmful to people generally. He goes on to say that if he were a Government officer he would order them all killed.
I have found that if I feed a stray for 2-3 days consecutively, he adopts my family. Every time my aged mother or young daughter go out for a walk or visit someone nearby, they follow at a respectably close distance and accompany them to and fro ensuring that they face no problems from anyone.
According to an article by the Canadian Medical Association Journal, over the past 23 years, on average 1000 people each year die from rabies in India (which is far less then AIDS and TB). "The majority of people who die of rabies are people of poor or low-income socioeconomic status." In any society, when there is people poverty there is animal poverty, and with both an excess of illness. Hence the both social and health importance of paying attention to the stray dog population.
Last year, around this time, the Kashmir authorities vowed to kill 100,000 stray dogs in an anti – rabies drive. This, at a time when we have laws in India that make it illegal to maim or injure an animal even if purposely done by a car. Punishments are fines and / or imprisonments of up to five years.
