Stray dogs being killed in Baghdad

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I would say this is precisely why there is another topic on these forums discussing the high suicide rates in veterinarians. Being the official poison meat vet. might make me questions things as well.
 
Any suggestions on how to euthanize animals on a large scale besides shooting them? (Which is also common).

The dog attacks are pretty scary and not all that infrequent. It's not practical to try and handle these animals as the majority are not domesticated.

My SO has been in Iraq a few times and while he was depressed over the manner of killing the animals, understood why it was done.
 
That's a great story. I feel bad for the vet in that situation, but if the dogs were "used to eating human flesh," and "aggressive," this may be the only option. I don't agree with baiting the puppies like that, though. That is a horrific way to go.
 
It's stories like this that make me anxious to be a vet now. There are so many humane solutions that just aren't feasible in some countries due to cost or lack of personnel. I was lucky enough to work as an assistant on a spay/neuter campaign in a foreign country and the reasoning for fixing vs culling the animals made so much sense. If you fix the animals and return them to their populations they will still be there to provide competition for food but cannot reproduce. If you cull a percentage of the population however, you will lower the competition so the remainder of the population will be better fed and therefore produce more and larger litters with a better chance of survival. After a short amount of time your previously culled population is back to high numbers again and you have to start the whole process over again. Your fixed population however, still maintains the high number you began with but does not reproduce itself so your overpopulation problem is better controlled.

As vets we'll be able to read these stories but instead of shaking our heads and saying "what a shame" we'll be able to offer an actual solution.
 
Offering solutions and affording solutions are very different things. Feral populations do have issues, and for many people dealing with feral populations the goal is not to cull, but to extinguish.

If it was easy to afford humane solutions, we wouldn't still use gas chambers in shelters.
 
sumstorm said:
Offering solutions and affording solutions are very different things.
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That's my point though, many organizations can't afford to pay for qualified vets and obviously can't practice medicine without a vet. We can spend some of our time volunteering our services not only physcially but being able to order necessary medications which in some cases is euth solution. One of the shelters across the border still resorts to electrocution to euthanize their animals because they rarely have access to euth solution due to both money and legal issues. As distasteful as it would be to spend a day euthanizing animals, knowing that you can provide a more humane alternative is a small consolation.
 
While that is heartbreaking, is it really that different from how we kill rats and other pests in America and other countries?
 
CatVet2Be, not sure gas chambers that are hooked up to gas generator exhausts are much better than electrocution. Just pointing out that if it was fiscally easy to do...we would have solved it here already. I don't see many vets volunteering thier time to go into shelters and euthanize locally (actually, in the entire year I volunteered at the local high kill shelter, I never saw a vet on premises once, and neither did any of the staff). And you don't have to be a vet to euthanize with beuth.... at least, I know you can be certified to do so at a shelter and not be a vet in NC and SC.

I hope you are right...and that I am terribly wrong. I just haven't seen evidence of it so far...and I don't think we are an exceptional group of vet applicants.
 
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Truth74 said:
Not really, but Strychnine isn't as common as it used to be.
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Ugh! Zoos routinely have problems with 'visitors' tossing poison bates into enclosures.

You can buy every sort of trap now...sticky, snap, zap, drown, throw away (live) etc. I about throttled my husband when he used a live trap, then neglected to empty it.

I would use electric before I would starve an animal to death.
 
sumstorm said:
Ugh! Zoos routinely have problems with 'visitors' tossing poison bates into enclosures.

You can buy every sort of trap now...sticky, snap, zap, drown, throw away (live) etc. I about throttled my husband when he used a live trap, then neglected to empty it.

I would use electric before I would starve an animal to death.
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In other countries people throw food in zoo enclosures or are you talking about the US here? I know people can be crazy and cruel though. Like putting cats in microwaves......

My cat that I left with my ex was shot a few months ago. He was always a indoor cat when I was there, but.. He was found locked up in the garage. No way he could of got there by himself. I was fortunate I got money from a organization that gives to people that can't afford some things. Good thing I did everything for him with vaccination, microchip etc. His leg was amputated. The vet had a lot to do with his survival as well. She never did a surgery before on a cat amputation and told me she had cats like this at home and he was so young. I am very grateful that we have vets like this.

I am angered by the cruelty of peoples actions. People are very selfish.
 
We need to protect the people too. This would prob be hard for many vets to kill dogs in this manner. Sometimes we have no choice but to put dogs/cats down b/c of their wildness. Some animals could be a vector of disease to healthy populations of peoples pets too and cause a threat to humans.

Look at how people train pit dogs to kill each other. Those dogs will never be normal and cannot be placed in homes. Its a sad world. If we have to put these kind of animals down, It should be humane. Some countries won't or can't do this though. Maybe one day the laws can change in some countries for the good.
 
WildlifeSaver said:
Look at how people train pit dogs to kill each other. Those dogs will never be normal and cannot be placed in homes.
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Just because a dog is "trained" to fight doesn't mean that it can't be rehabbed and placed in a good home. Look at Michael Vick's dogs that have good normal lives now, some in multi-dog households. Look at how many puppy mill rescues grow into people-loving individuals. Many dogs can be rehabilitated and retrainted. However, it DOES take a lot of patience and resources that are not always available obviously.

But someone mentioned that the dogs are 'used to eating human flesh' (I didn't read the article yet, I'm just thinking in terms of what's been said here), I can understand why culling the population would be necessary. Its one thing to manage a dog-aggressive dog, human aggression, especially unprovoked, is a different matter. When its either your children's survival or that of a feral dog, the children win in terms of priorities. And yes humane would be ideal but Americans neuter livestock without anaesthesia apparently, and I'm not sure which weighs in as worse on the ethics scale. If you don't have the money then you don't have the money.
 
I am eternally grateful that Michael Vick was such a a bad trainer/breeder and only 1 dog had to be put down due to being too aggressive to rehabilitate. All of the other ones, are in a rehabilitation/shelter, or in a home, right now.

Some Iraqis say that in areas where the sectarian killing was high and bodies lined the streets, the dogs became used to eating human flesh.

An Iraqi veterinarian said that makes the strays more aggressive toward humans.
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In this situation, if they see me as lunch, I would still go for something less painful. Not sure what, but paralysis and convulsions? There's got to be something better.
 
Actually that makes me wonder the validity of the statement. Because there are people who will say that giving a dog raw meat will make it a vicious animal with killer prey drive as well. Which is certainly not true. Dogs are scavangers by nature.
 
I can't find the articles, but I know a month or maybe more, there was an article released regarding the amount of Iraqi deaths each month in Baghdad was fairly significant (I believe about 26?) from dog related mauling.

Rabies is pretty rampant in Iraq from what I've been told. It's not uncommon for the soldiers and Marines to have "pet puppies" on base, but if it scratches or bites you, they're shot and tested for rabies. I think even one of the puppies imported into the US that was adopted by US Soldiers had rabies and was euthanized after its stateside arrival.
 
Groominator said:
Just because a dog is "trained" to fight doesn't mean that it can't be rehabbed and placed in a good home. Look at Michael Vick's dogs that have good normal lives now, some in multi-dog households. Look at how many puppy mill rescues grow into people-loving individuals. Many dogs can be rehabilitated and retrainted. However, it DOES take a lot of patience and resources that are not always available obviously.

But someone mentioned that the dogs are 'used to eating human flesh' (I didn't read the article yet, I'm just thinking in terms of what's been said here), I can understand why culling the population would be necessary. Its one thing to manage a dog-aggressive dog, human aggression, especially unprovoked, is a different matter. When its either your children's survival or that of a feral dog, the children win in terms of priorities. And yes humane would be ideal but Americans neuter livestock without anaesthesia apparently, and I'm not sure which weighs in as worse on the ethics scale. If you don't have the money then you don't have the money.
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I know what you are saying here. About the dogs being trained to fight other dogs..yes sometimes you can save their life by rehabbing them. I think most of the time we don't do this for the safety of other dogs or etc. I watched a lot of animal planet in my life and the other day a show was on and a shelter put down over a hund dogs that were trained to fight. It seems from what I get from resources younger dogs are better canidates to retrain while the ones that have been fighting for a period of time do not. Its just so risky even if they go through that intense training. Do I agree that we shouldn't do EVERYTHING no matter what it takes? No. As humans or people who are veterinarians I would love to think we make the right decisions all to most of the time, but sometimes hard descisions to put down animals that aren't seemed adoptable happens. There is just not enough money and space and time to work with all those animals with a def chance they will never be normal again.
 
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My sister is currently living in Yemen and she has never seen a stray dog. Apparently it is custom to kill stray dogs (by beating, primarily) because they (or so the populace believes/says) carry disease.

There are, however, loads of stray cats. My sister's rounded several up and found a vet to alter them. He had only spayed one cat in the past... From what she tells me, he isn't all that great. One actually did not survive, although that can happen from time to time here, too.. He's essentially trained in poultry/farm medicine...
 
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