From the time when two representatives from the World Society for the Protection of Animals (WSPA)(UK) first approached HIS in l994, the shelter has conducted an ABC programme, first on a trial basis, and then expanding to cover the whole city. At first there was much resistance from the Municipal Corporation. Later it was realised that there were no longer dying pups lying in gutters, and mangy starving dogs with crippling wounds offending tourists, and the JMC offered a facility to HIS in the north of the city so that the HIS ABC programme could be expanded. Dr Sunil Chawla, vet in charge, obtained statistics which showed that for the first time, probably in the history of Jaipur, there was no human incidence of rabies in the area worked by the ABC. Then HIS (USA) helped HIS by funding an Extension Programme, headed by HIS veterinary surgeon Jack Reece. Through this programme we were able to demonstrate humane catching techniques to compounders, good surgery to vets, and proper management to staff starting up new ABC Programmes. We were frequently told that a new shelter had learnt in a week what it would have taken a year to learn without the help of staying at HIS and working alongside our team.
Then more successes followed. In 2006 Jack Reece (HIS volunteer veterinary surgeon) and Sunil Chawla had a research paper detailing the results of the HIS ABC programme published in the British Veterinary Record. We believe this is the first scientific report in a peer-review journal of the effects of an ABC programme on street dogs populations and rabies. The paper is already being used to illustrate the benefits of ABC programmes in other countries including China.
In 2006 Jack Reece was awarded the first Tevor Blackburn Award by the British Veterinary Association for his work in the field of animal health and welfare in a developing country.
In July, 2006, a biography of Christine Townend (Chair of Trustees of HIS), authored by journalist John Little, was published by Pan Macmillan. The book is entitled Christine’s Ark, and most of it is focussed upon the successful work of HIS.
In February 2007, HIS was visited by population biologist, Rex Hiby, from WSPA (Please see his article below). His study of the statistics showed that the street dog population of Jaipur could soon crash, not through killing, poisoning, or electrocution, which sadly has been happening in Bangalore, but through a carefully conducted project in which the highest standards, both ethical, veterinary and administrative, are implemented, and in which dogs are kept for three or four days at HIS, and released back onto the street in the place they were caught, only after we are assured of their recovery.
Jack Reece and Mukesh in the dispensary with three tragic rescue cases
The Results Of A Recent Examination Of His Abc Statistics And Survey Of Dogs
Lex Hiby
Lex Hiby is a population biologist who has worked mainly on wildlife population questions, as for example, ways of estimating whale numbers for the International Whaling Commission and on monitoring the number of seals around the UK. Currently he's working on software to match photos of uniquely marked wild animals like cheetahs and zebras. He hopes his tiger program will be used one day in the effort to combat poaching, by matching photos of tiger skins against a central catalogue of live tiger photos.
What is likely to happen to the number of street dogs in an Indian city like Jaipur, where dogs are collected from the street for surgical sterilisation? Will the number decrease and if so how long will it take? In Jaipur, Help in Suffering have sterilised more than two thousand female dogs per year for more than ten years. It’s difficult to know by how much the Jaipur dog population has decreased over that time but judging by annual counts in the Pink City (an area that has been relatively unaffected by building work) the number of adult females has not decreased by much.
Why has the population not decreased - is the number of sterilisations too small? That’s unlikely, given that throughout the city most of the adult females observable on the street have the small ear notch that shows they have been sterilised. Perhaps the wrong dogs have been sterilised - are there females in houses or commercial properties, out of reach of the sterilisation programme, which are raising lots of puppies that are ending up on the street? Again, that’s unlikely, given that in India dogs are usually fed on the street or find food by themselves and are not kept indoors. And a recent survey of the Malviya Nagar industrial area found no evidence of guard dogs kept within the factories to roam the streets at night. Probably the number of pedigree pet dogs is increasing but it seems that as yet there are few unwanted puppies.
Lex Hiby with rescued dog, HIS
More likely than either of those explanations is that the effort to control the population size has increased the productivity of the remaining unsterilised females. In the absence of any control measures the street dog population will reach a “carrying capacity”, set by the size of the human population, when lack of food, incidence of disease and lack of tolerance of the nuisance caused by a high density of street dogs will limit its further increase. Some combination of an increase in the age at first pregnancy, a decrease in pregnancy rate and an increase in mortality (particularly of puppies) will stop the population growing. Conversely, if the population is held below the carrying capacity then pregnancy rate (for the remaining unsterilised females) will increase and mortality will decrease. That is probably what is happening in Jaipur – even if the dog population has not decreased by much it is now well below the carrying capacity, which must have increased by 50% or more as the human population of Jaipur has grown over the last ten years. Casual observation of the Jaipur street dogs does suggest they are now well nourished and the proportion of dogs that HIS has had to put to sleep because of terminal illness has halved over the last ten years.
So what will happen in the future, will increasing pregnancy rate and decreasing mortality maintain the population forever? No, because there are limits to pregnancy rate and survival so, provided the sterilisation effort is maintained, the street dog population should start to decline, probably quite soon. And at the same time the number of sterilisations required to maintain it at a reduced level will also decline.
How will we know if this prediction is fulfilled? How can the population be monitored? HIS will continue to make annual counts in the Pink City. And the “compounders”, who go out daily to collect dogs for vaccination and sterilisation, will use event counters to count the pups, males and females, with and without ear notches, in each area of the city. Those counts, together with information from the individual tattoo markings applied to each sterilised or vaccinated dog, should allow us to model the population from now on. If it works the data collection methods developed by HIS in Jaipur could form a model for use by other ABC programmes in India.
