Autonomous non-profit organization
“Centre for Animal Welfare Legal Protection”

STRAY DOGS IN A MEGAPOLIS

Brief report on videomonitoring of stray dogs in Moscow

Тема 5.
Stray dogs in and around the yards, streets, in the compounds of industrial, trading, community and cultural facilities.
Secton 5.5
Hordes of stray dogs pull out of dustbins and make off with garbage, which is conducive to rapid breeding of rats and crows that scavenge for remnants of food uneaten by dogs. More food than is enough for stray dogs is routinely left by tender-hearted citizens and the so-called “guardians” of stray dogs. As a rule, most of this food is consumed by rats and crows. For this reason, rat and stray-dog dens are located side by side. Later, the food eaten up by stray dogs in the form of feces, infected by parasitic and infectious diseases (according to independent researchers, e.g. Makarov, Dudnikov, Poyaganov, no less that 30% of stray dogs are infected by petrospirosis, toxoplasmosis, toxcocarosis) settles onto the lawns or children’s playgrounds. This calls in question a popular fallacy that stray dogs are allegedly sanitarians of municipal sewers and reduce the population of rats and crows, and that sealing dust bins will reduce the numbers of stray dogs, because it is the tender-hearted citizens and guardians, not the sewers, that are main providers of food for stray dogs.

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