The mean streets are no happy home for stray dogs

That’s Cricket, the dog, not cricket the game. In her recently released memoir No Going Back: The Truth of What’s Wrong with Politics, South Dakota’s Republican governor Kristi Noem wrote about shooting Cricket, a 14-month old puppy she deemed “untrainable". Cricket, she complained had disrupted a pheasant hunt, killed the neighbour’s chickens and tried to bite her. “I hated that dog," writes Noem. So she led her to a gravel pit and killed her. And while she was at it, she decided to put down a “nasty and mean" goat as well, name unknown.

Noem, who hopes to be on the shortlist for Donald Trump’s vice-presidential picks, thought the anecdote would burnish her reputation as a practical, no-nonsense politician who doesn’t shy away from tough choices. Instead she’s been facing bipartisan backlash.

American politicians can afford to be ultra tough on deaths in Gaza, campus protesters, Ukraine, Black Lives Matter. But puppies are a different ballgame. It’s not about putting an animal down. It’s bragging about it. That’s just not cricket.

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Everyone from right-wing media outlets to Walt Disney’s grand-niece, the film-maker Abigail Disney, is lambasting her. Noem should have known better. Republican senator Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign in 2012 was rocked when he recounted what he thought was a funny family story about tying his Irish setter (in its kennel) to the roof of the car on a 12-hour trip in 1983. Now even Romney is trolling Noem.

“I didn’t eat my dog. I didn’t shoot my dog. I loved my dog, and my dog loved me," said Romney, according to HuffPost. Given the bizarre state of American politics, no one knows whether Noem shot herself in the foot or actually improved her chances to make it to Trump’s vice-presidential shortlist. But dogs evoke strong passions the world over. As a famous politician closer home memorably said that one feels bad when a puppy gets run over.

Compassion for a puppy killed in an accident was held up as the lowest common denominator of our humanity. But nothing, not even Bharatiya Janata Party-Congress mud fights, get WhatsApp groups as worked up in India as a post about the country’s dog problem. One side shares every news story about packs of stray dogs attacking children. The other side calls them heartless puppy-killers. The ones worst off are those who love dogs but also maintain that India’s stray dog population is out of control and needs some hard choices. They are stuck between a dog and a hard place.

Ecologist Abi T. Vanak told me earlier this year that too many people go around feeding dogs in the name of compassion but take zero responsibility for their well-being. “Real compassion would involve forcing the state to take more responsibility and building good quality shelters. And if you don’t think you can see dogs in shelters, please adopt them." He feels all the well-wishers doggedly feeding street dogs compound the problem. “The more dogs we feed, the more dogs there are on the street."

Vanak is a dog lover. He has a rescued dog at home. And he knows his views will raise the hackles of many dog lovers. There are by some estimates 60-80 million street dogs in India right now. And sterilisation cannot keep up with the booming dog population because we just do not sterilise enough dogs and we do not do it fast enough.

More than 90% of the dog population has to be sterilised in a very short time to see a 70% dog population reduction over a 10-15 year period, say Vanak and other experts. India is nowhere close to that. And animal control laws in India have very little teeth. If you have a chronic biter in the neighbourhood that’s not rabid, there’s very little anyone can do legally.

Few will disagree with the likes of Vanak that a dog’s life on the streets is no picnic. There is 80% pup mortality within the first year, claims Vanak. The dogs are pelted with stones, maimed in traffic accidents, scrounge for food in garbage dumps. Yet we are hard-wired to go awww the moment we see a puppy.

I am no exception. The logical part of my brain understands Vanak. When I read about dogs killing the critically endangered Indian bustard, I am aghast. Yet it’s hard to resist the impulse to feed a hungry puppy. Evolution has tied us together as a species. We might think we are doing the dogs a favour by feeding them. But in reality they are nourishing us as well. As a species, we are hungry for the love a dog can provide. “It’s not just food they want," filmmaker Jesse Alk, who made a documentary called Pariah Dog (2019) about Kolkata’s street dogs and their eccentric feeders, told me. “They are deeply lonely. Take the mangiest street dog. Even if you don’t have food, if you go up to him and pet him, most of them will melt."

Our street in Kolkata has quite a family of dogs. A neighbour takes responsibility for feeding them, sterilising them, taking them to the vet. Every day the neighbour goes to the park to summon them for lunch and dinner and returns like the Pied Piper with the dogs in tow.

Chutney at our own house was born on the street. He was one of four siblings. Three perished within months, under the wheels of cars. Chutney’s mother deposited him in our garden for safekeeping. One day as we were watching television, we heard a knock at the door. When I opened it, we found the little puppy looking at us literally with puppy-dog eyes after pushing at the door. Now he is ensconced in the house. He sulks if the air conditioner is not turned on on warm nights, eats American snacks and yak milk chews after dinner, though his true love is Marie biscuits. He went to my niece’s wedding in his customised red brocade doggy “sherwani".

The problem is we have room for one Chutney in the house but not for a dozen. Their lives on the street remain fraught. Handsome, one of the friendly boisterous dogs on our street, was suspected of contracting rabies. Somehow the neighbour cornered him and got him confined to a room. All night she was unable to sleep as the dog shredded the plastic chair and tore the sheets.

The next day Sanjoy, from the veterinary clinic, showed up. We watched with trepidation as he lassoed the thrashing foaming dog and jabbed him with a needle.

“How long will it take?" I asked.

“That’s just the anaesthetic to calm him down," Sanjoy said. Eventually, Handsome flopped down and was quiet. He seemed almost resigned as he accepted the lethal dose.

“When will he die?" Someone asked. “He’s gone," said Sanjoy.

They dug a grave for Handsome at the back of the house and dragged him there. Covered in bleaching powder, Handsome looked oddly docile—as if talcum-ed after a bath. The animal control men joked about dog ghosts while someone got a few flowers and bael (Bengal quince) leaves from the tree outside.

“Throw some earth on him," said Sanjoy and we did. Then the hard-bitten cynical man shovelled dirt over him and said something rather lovely. “Poor guy, go in peace. Come back to a better life next time."

We lit two candles on his grave before we returned to our own homes.

Handsome reminded us yet again that mean streets can be no happy home for tens of thousands of dogs despite our sentimental attachment to them. He was luckier than most that someone watched out for him beyond feeding him scraps. But it was a sad end for a handsome dog.

Yet it’s not every day a street dog with rabies gets a neighbourhood send off.

In these toxic polarised times that’s something.

Cult Friction is a fortnightly column on issues we keep rubbing up against.

Sandip Roy is a writer, journalist and radio host. He posts @sandipr

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