Dogs

This is a long, long overdue post on dogs.

 

Taiwan has a large population of dogs, and I strong feelings about Taiwanese dogs. I find that dogs in Taiwan have surprisingly different manifestations than their US counterparts, and therefore, I’d like to share some things about Taiwanese dogs.

 

It is impossible to miss them in Taipei. After all, they are being toted around in purses, they are being pushed in strollers, they are being carried through fancy department stores. Even though Taiwan’s younger population is not into reproducing (it has one of the lowest per capita birth rates in the world), this hasn’t stopped young Taiwanese from having babies. It’s just that their “babies” are often dogs that are groomed to a T. Dog ownership is increasing in Taiwan, especially in urban areas, and owners are spending more on their pets to pamper them like part of the family.

 

But my strong feelings about dogs are not really about these dogs. I am happy that people can form bonds with these animals and am sure that both parties benefit.

 

I really want to talk about the stray dogs in Taiwan. What I would really like to communicate is how much I believe Taiwan’s stray dog population is a problem. And that is why you may notice that this post has a lack of adorable dog pictures, because I am actually writing this out of frustration and fear and I just don’t want to add cute dog pictures to the sentiment. For my dog-loving and non-dog-loving readers alike, hang tight, things are about to get serious.

 

What is a stray dog problem? For context, Detroit and Bucharest have both been in the news recently because of stray dog problems. Estimates for stray dogs in these regions are around 0.01 and 0.028 per capita, respectively. Taiwan’s stray dog population is at 0.0079 per capita as of a 2010 estimate (Peng et al. 2012). But before you laud that as “not bad”, remember that these are per human capita estimates. Therefore, it’s important to also consider the density of humans that we are talking about. This is also important because I am most concerned about the problems that arise when humans run into stray dogs (stray dogs also tend to have bad lives due to chronic disease and malnutrition, and also might interfere with local fauna, ex. Butler et al. 2004, so it’s a bad situation for everyone, but I’m going to mainly focus on problems with human-dog interactions), which is going to happen at a higher rate if there are both a lot of stray dogs and a lot of humans in a small area.  It turns out that Detroit’s human population density is 1,985/km2 and Bucharest’s is 8,260/km2 and Taipei’s is 9,800/km2 (source: Wikipedia). So Taiwan’s stray dog population may be lower per capita than Detroit’s, but the truth is that they are living unavoidably in the same space as people.

 

I am also positive – although this is a problem, I’m not alone in thinking about it. There have been huge improvements in the reduction of stray dogs per capita, which used to be 0.033 (higher than Bucharest is now). Apparently the great boom in Taiwan’s stray dog population occurred in the late 1980s to the early 1990’s, which is when numbers became truly unacceptable. Activists have been mobilized on this issue in Taiwan ever since (check out this recent example), and there have been some good improvements since then, including the signing of Taiwan’s Animal Protection Act in 1998. This increased public animal shelters across the island. It hasn’t been a smooth road of improvements: there were various media scandals about abuse at the shelters involving cruel executions and using the dogs for fighting (Peng et al. 2012). Furthermore, adoption rates from shelters is still quite low, and the vast majority of dogs in shelters are euthanized after a period of 7-12 holding days.

 

Unfortunately, a lack of proper education has turned this into a vicious cycle. Generally speaking, stray dogs only occur in high numbers due to human behaviors – they are often too malnourished to have high reproductive rates in the wild, a stray dog population is sustained largely by human abandonment. Alas, many Taiwanese know that if they turn a dog into a shelter, it will be likely be euthanized. Thus, out of what they think is compassion, they release the dog to the streets (Hsu et al. 2003). This is also more likely to occur because it could be that they got the animal for free, or nearly free, and therefore don’t see a great loss to removing the animal from their care if it is not behaving well. The source of low-cost or free- puppies is likely due to low spay and neutering rates, which Taiwanese dog owners do less frequently than American dog owners.  It also turns out that non-spayed or neutered animals are more likely to escape to get on their sexy times, which may then lead to them being lost, and ended up out on the street for good.

 

Which brings me to a point that is different from most dog owners that I know in the States: sometimes it’s hard to tell the difference between stray dogs and dogs that are being kept. It’s seems that it’s a pretty common practice for people to sort of keep dogs around, which may be former strays that they feed out of pity. Or it can simply be a dog that they keep outside the house. These somewhat more laissez-faire methods of keeping dogs are more common in less urban areas with more space. They are also likely responsible for the response rate of nearly 30% of dog owners reporting that they had “lost” a dog in the past. An irresponsibly-raised free-roaming dog is but a few steps away from stray.

 

I wanted to talk about this partially because the university where I am studying right now, NCKU, also feels very strongly about dogs. This is an entire page about the status of stray dogs on the campus.  Unfortunately, some of the pages there don’t work, but there are actually multiple videos that the student animal rights group has made about these stray dogs. This one provides pretty thorough interviews with the leaders of the volunteer group, and introduces some of the work that they do. According to the interviews in the video, there are most likely nearly 30 stray dogs on campus, possibly up to 40.  “Most of them are friendly and you can pet them. There are only a few that don’t like people very much… if you come by they will just avoid you by themselves.” Essentially, the group does the best that they can to take care of the animals, seeing that they are fed and get the proper veterinary care, and of course that they get spayed and neutered. “Taiwan has a lot of stray dogs. So if there are strays constantly entering and leaving the campus, then we can’t tell if newly entered dogs will chase people. But if we have a stable population of dogs in the campus, then we can understand their situation. We can train them so they won’t chase people, they won’t bite people. Then we can use their territorial nature to keep too many other strays from wandering into the campus. That way, really, the campus…is more stable.” [translations by me, sorry if they’re a bit awkward]

 

Why does NCKU care so much about the campus stray dog population? In part, it’s because in 2008, an elderly French teacher on campus was startled when the dogs started chasing her on her bike. She fell over and hit her head, knocking her unconscious. The teacher who told me this story also said that she thought this French woman suffered some permanent brain damage due to the incident. It certainly inspired action on the part of the university.

 

To add my personal experiences: nothing makes your heart and your bike race faster than being chased by a pack of 10+ stray dogs on a dark empty road. As far as I’m concerned, this is a scary problem.

 

On a lighter note, there was this time that New Taipei City traded gold for dog poop.

 

 

And with that… Blogathon officially completed! That was tiring, but also inspiring. Not only do I have a lot of ideas for new posts, I feel more willing to try some more complicated formats that I’ve thought about using but have been too scared to try before. Also, thanks for those who provided some encouragement along the way.

 

Of course, while I write this blog for myself, I also put this out on the Internet for a reason. I sure could save a lot of time if didn’t try to make this something that I think other people wanted to read, so I always welcome your opinions. I think I covered a good breadth of topics and had some different types of posts this week. If you want to tell me your preferences for what you’d like to read more of while they’re fresh in your mind (ex: “more vignettes and please don’t ramble about your personal issues like with your name cuz that’s boring” or “please post more collections of pictures on a theme” or “your secondary research / collected data and observation posts tend to be old knowledge and are therefore kind of blah” or “tell me more about how much you love your bike”), I’ll definitely listen and maybe even pay attention…but no guarantees.

 

Cited works

Butler, J.R.A,  J.T du Toit, J. Bingham. (2004). Free-ranging domestic dogs (Canis familiaris) as predators and prey in rural Zimbabwe: threats of competition and disease to large wild carnivores. Biological Conservation. 115(3), 369-378. doi:10.1016/S0006-3207(03)00152-6.

 

Hsu, Y., Severinghaus, L. L., & James, A. (2003). Dog Keeping in Taiwan : Its Contribution to the Problem of Free-Roaming Dogs. Journal of Applied Animal Welfare Science, 6(1), 1–23. doi:10.1207/S15327604JAWS0601

 

Peng, S. J.-L., Lee, L. Y.-T., & Fei, A. C.-Y. (2012). Shelter animal management and trends in Taiwan. Journal of applied animal welfare science : JAAWS, 15(4), 346–57. doi:10.1080/10888705.2012.709143