Dogcatcher's Dumpster
Animal Control the Right Way
Cuba has a homeless dog problem. They have had it for years. Tourists see the dogs in public parks, around
hotels and near museums and tourist attractions. Dog and cat lovers often go back home from
Cuba wishing they could do something to help their hapless furry friends. They spend a little time on the Internet and
write us to see what can be done.
Cubans know what their government does about the strays, and
it isn't pretty. Gangs of prisoners
cruise the city in trucks looking for the strays. If they spot a healthy dog or cat, it usually
can elude these jailbird dog catchers, but they usually capture the old, the
sick, and the nursing females and their puppies. Those animals unlucky enough to be caught are
tossed into metal dumpsters trailed behind trucks for a hot, bumpy ride to a
"zoonosis" center about 15 miles west of Havana. "Zoonosis" is Cuban for animal
killing center.
Those sweeps for strays are the government's way of making a
good impression on tourists, Cuba's biggest source of hard currency, but,
judging by the comments of travelers, the effort is largely a failure. Not publicized by the governments is what
happens to the captured animals. At the
zoonosis center (named Arroyo), new arrivals are placed in large barred cells,
perhaps 20 to a cage. They are given
water, but no food for a few days as they are watched for signs of rabies. After the quarantine period, their hunger is
satisfied with a meal laced with strychnine.
Then begins an hour's long intense suffering as the poison does its
work, and finally all is quiet, and the dead animals are removed to a landfill.
The government provides no money for humane euthanasia
medicines, even though much of the staff at Arroyo is trained to administer the
needed intravenous injections. The lack
of trained people is rarely a problem in Cuba because of its good free
education system. So the main problem is
lack of humane euthanasia medicines.
Since TAP began helping Aniplant helping Cuban animals in
2005, we have concentrated on supplying anesthesia medicines to Aniplant's
spay-neuter clinics. Aniplant has
progressed steadily from 500 sterilizations per year to over 5000 per
year. This work has been more effective
in reducing strays on the street than all the years of roving prisoner dog
catchers. Without sterilization, Arroyo
killed about 14000 animals a year. But
in the years since TAP augmented Aniplant's supplies of anesthetics, the number
of animals killed in Arroyo has declined to about 6000 a year, a 57 percent
drop in cruel killings with poison.
The use of strychnine is no secret. Your hotel bellboy can probably tell you what
happens to the strays who hang around tourist areas when they get sick. What he probably won't tell you is we've
already cut down the slaughter by 8000 animals per year.
The Humane Society of the United States has said that the
only log-term effective solution to animal homelessness is massive spay-neuter
campaigns like the ones Aniplant provides.
We subscribe to that belief, and our most important work, helping
Aniplant's spay-neuter clinics, is having the desired its desired effect in
curtailing the number of poisonings.
Think about it; what good does killing 14000 dogs a year do
if those who remain are free to breed and replace their numbers within a
year? It's far better to restrict their
ability to breed and gradually curtail the poisonings and their associated
suffering. Your donations to TAP make this
possible.
Les Inglis
