How to be responsible pet owners

The solution to rabies outbreaks, the overpopulation of dogs and cats, strays, cruelty to and neglect of pets is not animal shelters. It is responsible pet ownership.

Humans must be discouraged from, even penalized for, neglecting and abandoning pets. Puppies and kittens are very cute so that humans unthinkingly buy or adopt them. The trouble is puppies and kittens grow up to become adult dogs and cats that are no longer cute. Getting tired of and bored with them, humans find that caring for them properly is both costly and difficult. To be healthy, cats and dogs have to be fed the right food, not just leftovers; when they are sick, they have to be taken to the veterinarian for treatment and given medications regularly after being taken home—all of which cost money.

So irresponsible humans, when the novelty of having a pet wears off, neglect them and even abandon them. These abandoned pets become strays and multiply quickly, thus increasing the stray population.

You will be surprised how quickly they multiply. A female cat, or queen, for instance, can give birth to a litter of four to six kittens every four months; the kittens grow into adult cats within a few months. Each of the female cats give birth to their own litters, which, in turn give birth to more kittens, and so on. The tomcats keep impregnating all the females within reach. An unspayed queen cat can, according to conservative estimates, multiply into 49,000 cats in 10 years. Multiply that by the number of stray queens and you can see how the cat population can explode if something is not done.

Even if a queen is not a stray, if not spayed, she will have a litter in her human’s home even if there is no tomcat in the house. Stray tomcats are very good at sniffing females in heat; likewise, queens in heat will escape to seek a mate then go home and give birth weeks later.

When that happens more than once, their humans, nine out of 10, will order the house help to abandon the kittens on a sidewalk or vacant lot. I have seen kittens and puppies thrown away—inside tightly-tied plastic bags so they would suffocate to death—in our neighborhood where supposedly educated humans live.

With dogs it is a little different. When a dog gives birth to a litter, the puppies are so cute that a visitor will ask for one. The owner is only too glad to give them away. In fact, they offer the puppies to friends. Some are sold in pet stores or on sidewalks. A passing human sees the cute puppies and buys one for his wife or child. They enjoy the puppy for a while, but when the puppy becomes an adult and is no longer cute, the humans get bored with it. Worse, if it is a bitch, she gives birth to her own litter and the rigmarole is repeated.

There should also be birth control among dogs and cats. But humans sometimes find spaying or neutering their dogs costly. So the dogs keep multiplying and when their humans cannot find other humans to adopt them, they throw them away. These become strays and, like the cats, they multiply. They also spread rabies.

Having animal shelters to take them will not solve the problem. In our country, there are only a handful of animal shelters and they are hard pressed for funding. If these shelters run by private citizens had not put policies or limits in place, irresponsible pet owners would take advantage of them and allow their pets to multiply, thinking that they could just leave the unwanted pets with these shelters. The common practice now is to dump animals in the streets.

Meanwhile, the Anti-Rabies Act does not allow dogs in the streets and states that strays should be collected by the local government units—which should have dog pounds, for which the euphemism is “shelter.” The fact is, in many LGUs, such facilities are focused on getting dogs off the streets and not on promoting the welfare of dogs.

But, really, what can the LGUs do with all those unwanted pets?

Mandaluyong, Pasig and Cainta, profess to have “no kill” animal pounds. But many pound volunteers have already seen that “no kill” simply translated into “slow kill.” While the animals are not injected with the euthanasia drug—which is still not registered in the Philippines and there is even a supply shortage of it in the local black market—the unclaimed animals are left to die because of lack of veterinary care and proper quarantine procedures, and because their nutritional requirements are not met. The pounds cannot refuse requests from taxpayers to collect dogs in the streets; so despite the fact that the pounds are full, the dogcatchers continue to cram the dogs in crowded cages. Eventually, the dogs die of disease. Those who are lucky enough to stay alive are kept in cages all day, which is also cruel. Very few families are willing to adopt them.

The answer is to keep the dogs and cats from multiplying. So the government animal “shelters” or pounds should also launch low-cost spay and neuter programs for pet owners and likewise, spay-neuter the adopted strays.

This is already being done in other countries, which also penalizes humans who abandon their pets. I was told that there is this new provision penalizing pet abandonment under the amended Animal Welfare Act.

But even that may not be enough. Dog fighting continues and the slaughter of dogs for “pulutan” by drunkards makes for a prosperous “industry” because the laws are not implemented strictly. When a dog trafficker is caught taking a jeepload of dogs to Baguio to be slaughtered and eaten, he is not sent to prison but merely made to pay a fine. So he goes back to his lucrative business. The law has to be strengthened, and the authorities should be pressured into implementing it to the letter.

Also, humans should be taught to be responsible pet owners. Pet owners should be given seminars on responsible pet ownership, which should be likewise taught in schools so the children can impart the knowledge to their parents. Only then will we be able to end cruelty to animals.