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Friday, December 13, 2013

                      
                                                        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