I was never a math
person and I, as most people, wondered what is math going to do for me in real
life.
Math proved very useful
in my work in animal welfare (I am an active member since 2007). It showed me
that a female dog can give birth to up to 20 puppies per year (I look after a
stray female dog which gave birth to 12 puppies at once); even if half of them
may be killed by accidents or disease or adopted, there are still 10 stray dogs
left on the street, 80% of which are females (because people adopt mostly males
from a litter of puppies, or, in case they abandon them, they keep the males).
Same goes for female dogs which are owned, but whose owners abandon the litters
twice a year, as a practice to control the canine population in their households.
But this is an extreme case, it has been established that a stray dog may give
birth to 8 live puppies per year; try and do the math yourselves. For each
stray or abandoned (thus, stray) female dog resulted from the equation above,
please re-apply same formula…you will be blown away.
Another painful math
lesson for me is the last year’s balance in Moreni, my hometown. We managed to
spay/neuter a total of 427 animals (mostly dogs), both stray and owned (thanks
to Romania Animal Rescue and their donors), we also rescued a total of 140
animals, while the local authorities and “concerned citizens” managed to kill
an approximate number of 600 stray dogs (poisoned, shot, trapped and killed in
the public shelter since September 2013 until present). But still, last week I
found 4 litters of puppies when walking for 30 minutes around town.
 |
| One of 5 puppies born on the streets this autumn |
 |
| One of 2 puppies, the second one got killed by a car. This one is lucky enough to be fed by a family. |
 |
| Three out of 5 puppies, they are fed by this nice lady |
 | |
| Two of I don't know how many puppies, very hungry |
Because the local
authorities killed so many spayed/neutered dogs from the streets, which lived
there for years and were protected by the local communities, now Moreni’s
streets are filling up with fertile dogs, bringing our town back before 2006
when we first started to organize free spay/neuter campaigns.
 | ||||||||||||
|
Last year I heard a
great slogan, saying “dogs can’t add, cats can’t subtract, but they sure can
multiply”. They may not know math, but there is no excuse for their owners not
to do the math and be responsible. There is no easy way to solve the stray
dogs’ problem in Romania. No matter how many dogs are killed (not euthanized,
killed), there will always be more dogs born and abandoned on the streets,
because, according to my math lesson, every female dog can
give birth to 8 - 20 puppies every year.
This is not a report
about feelings, about wishful thinking, about women who can’t do anything else
with their lives but dedicate it to mutts; this is a report about math. And
about INDIFFERENCE.
 
Note:
this report is based on personal experience gathered in 8 years, in a small
town in Romania.
 |
