"The basic safety rule is to avoid such places": a dog handler about the problem of stray dogs and how to solve it

- Recently in Orenburg, a pack of stray dogs attacked a child. This is not the first such tragedy. It happens that adults are also attacked. Why do stray dogs show aggression towards people and for what purpose do they attack? Do they perceive people as game or do they just want to drive them out of their territory?

There are several reasons why dogs can react aggressively to humans. This may be the seasonal breeding season, when all animals are particularly inflated. In addition, indeed, dogs can sometimes behave defiantly in response to the sudden appearance of a person, to approach a valuable resource for them. And a person may not be aware of it. Dogs can easily acquire a similar behavioral pattern: for example, once they barked at a person - and he gave them a chicken from the bag that he carried, and he left.

It is enough for one dog from the pack to rush - and all the other animals follow suit. Dogs do not specifically hunt humans, but anything can be a trigger for an attack - a wrong step or a wave of the hand.

Most often, the victims of dog packs are either children or adults in a state of alcoholic intoxication. Both of them, unfortunately, cannot sensibly assess the situation, notice the danger in time. Such tragedies are played out in deserted places (vacant lots, abandoned construction sites, industrial zones and garages) and, as a rule, at dusk. Therefore, the basic safety rule is to avoid such places, not to take a shortcut through vacant lots, to teach children to stay away from such places.

Basically, the only correct course of action if you see a stray pack is to turn around and walk away. You can not wave your hands, fuss - this shows dogs uncertainty in human behavior and can provoke their attack.

I must say that sometimes even experienced dog handlers get into such situations if they overestimate their strength. It is enough for dogs to drop a person on the ground so that everything ends very badly for him.

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• © John Rensten

- What can be done to increase your chances of survival if the dogs have already attacked?

- Usually, stray dogs grab a person by the back of the leg or by the sleeve. When he starts waving his hands in response, it only inflates them even more. Most often, the death of a person in the event of a dog attack occurs from massive blood loss. Sometimes one unsuccessful bite caught in a large blood vessel is enough for a person to bleed in a few minutes.

Plus, often the aggressive and arrogant behavior of stray dogs is involuntarily accustomed to compassionate people who feed them. Sometimes you can witness that a woman is walking with a bag of food for dogs, and animals are running, barking, jumping on her, grabbing her clothes. A woman does not perceive this as a threat, but dogs get used to the fact that defiant behavior leads to the desired result.

- What are usually dogs from street packs, why are there practically no purebred dogs among them? Although there is an idea that the flocks are replenished precisely at the expense of animals thrown into the street.

- I would very much like to believe that the packs are replenished at the expense of dogs thrown into the street. However, in fact, a domestic, purebred dog rarely survives on the street. Most often, the animal itself becomes a victim of stray dogs or is hit by a car. Unfortunately, the domestic dog has almost no developed survival skills in such conditions. Only a few adapt well, such cases are more common not in the city, but in rural areas.

And typical stray dogs are usually not mestizos of purebred dogs. Often these are semi-wild animals that have their own behavioral type. These individuals are cautious about everything new and have a pronounced territorial behavior. They can compete for the resource, but they will not risk their skin in vain. In fact, they are on the border between wild and domestic animals.

- Is it possible to attach dogs that grew up on the street to families as pets? Can they become a friend to a person?

"It's very difficult. Usually, people who have taken a dog caught on the street into the house expect gratitude from the animal for salvation. But often a person is overtaken by cruel disappointment.

Yes, a dog born on the street can become attached to a person, but it will still retain its old habits. Such an animal must be specially adapted to life with a person, taking into account its characteristics. It's not easy. You should take off your rose-colored glasses and look at the situation soberly.

Most often, dogs taken from shelters are quickly returned back by new owners. Sometimes a dog can change five to seven families, because people are simply not ready to deal with it so painstakingly. There is a sharp conflict between expectation and reality.

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• © Uwe Krejci

- How do stray dogs affect the ecosystem? And what infections that are dangerous for domestic dogs and people, in addition to rabies, can they carry?

"In terms of transmission, stray dogs are particularly dangerous because they are equally in contact with wild animals and with the urban environment. They can carry all diseases dangerous to animals - this is the plague of carnivores, and rabies, and enteritis, and leptospirosis, etc.

For example, if you walk with a puppy that still has a weak immune system, in an area where stray dogs live, then there is a high risk that your animal will become infected with a dangerous infection. It is not uncommon for a puppy not even to go outside, sit at home in quarantine, but the owners bring the infection from the street on shoes, just walking through the area where stray dogs live. Adult domestic dogs are also not 100% protected from danger, because some infections are able to break through even the immunity created by vaccination.

As for the impact of stray dogs on ecosystems, they can contribute to a decrease in populations of wild animals - hares, hedgehogs, foxes, some birds. Dogs, in addition to their large size, have another important advantage over wild animals - they are often fed by caring people or find food in garbage dumps themselves. Therefore, the population of dogs is expanding, and the populations of other animals, respectively, are decreasing.

- The media write that the dogs that attacked the child were caught, but in three weeks they will be released into the street again, after sterilization and chipping. And the question of euthanasia is not worth it ...

- A lot of copies have been broken on this issue, because there are opposing groups with different points of view in society. These questions greatly affect people's feelings about domestic dogs, because we usually imagine them, human friends. For example, such discussions almost never arise when it comes to fur or beef cattle breeding. But there is a special attitude towards dogs in our culture, this topic is painfully perceived by society.

Today, the most common solution is to capture, sterilize and vaccinate, and then return the animals to the street. The issue of aggressive dogs that have already attacked people is solved in different ways - somewhere they are placed in shelters, somewhere they are secretly killed, bypassing the law.

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• © Vitaliy Tymkiv

- In general, according to modern Russian legislation, stray dogs need to be caught, sterilized and released back into the wild. It is believed that after that they are no longer dangerous to humans. Is this true?

- Sterilization gives only one effect - it deprives animals of the opportunity to reproduce, it does not affect the behavior of the dog. The only thing is that mass sterilization of stray dogs can, in principle, remove the seasonality factor - there will be no rutting periods when animals are especially aggressive due to a hormonal surge. Therefore, if the risks are reduced, it is only indirectly.

But sterilization will not turn a dog that previously bitten a person to death into a cute and peaceful animal. It's impossible, no matter how much someone would like to believe it. No, it will be the same dog as before sterilization, with the old behavioral patterns.

"In this case, the idea of saving the lives of dogs that have already attacked humans looks unsafe ...

- There is a large stratum of people in society who look at this issue differently. In principle, if such a dog is sent to a shelter, where it will be located without threatening people, then why not? Another question is who will finance the work of such a shelter. This is not cheap, because, in addition to dog food, you need to pay for the work of people who will take care of them, land rent, etc. So far, such infrastructure in Russia is not very developed, to a greater extent these are private initiatives at the expense of caring citizens.

- If the "trapping-sterilization" scheme really works, then in how many years will we be able to see the real effect? If we assume that sterilization will be carried out en masse?

- To predict when the situation with stray dogs will stabilize in Russia, you need to take into account that the life expectancy of a dog on the street usually does not exceed five to six years. If all these dogs are sterilized at the age of about one and a half years, then it can be assumed that in about four years the street population should decrease. It is clear that this is a very approximate calculation, because we operate with averaged data.

At the same time, unfortunately, cases of dishonesty cannot be ruled out, when authorized structures can receive funding, but in practice they do not sterilize or vaccinate dogs. This is also a problem. We expect that the number of stray dogs will decrease, but we do not see this in practice. Therefore, it is important that the campaign for the sterilization of dogs is carried out massively and everywhere.

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• © Vitaliy Tymkiv

- Recently it became known that in Russia they may amend the law on the treatment of stray animals. They want to give the regions the right to decide for themselves what to do with packs of stray dogs. The relevant amendments were submitted to the State Duma for consideration. Will such an innovation be beneficial?

- The situation is really different everywhere. And if street dogs are already beginning to pose a clear threat somewhere, then the softness of the legislation begins to provoke people to independent actions to exterminate these animals.

So the idea of giving the regions more powers in the field of regulating the populations of stray dogs is sound. The situation is different in different regions, so it would be right to allow the problem to be solved on the ground by methods that are acceptable for a particular region.