An estimated 200 million stray dogs live globally. Their welfare and management raises questions about human responsibility for animals we have created through domestication.
Stray dog welfare is a global crisis created by human decisions — the failure to sterilize companion dogs, abandonment when animals become inconvenient, and the lack of infrastructure for responsible ownership in low and middle-income countries. The suffering of stray dogs is pervasive: chronic hunger, untreated injuries and disease, exposure to traffic and human cruelty, and in countries with mass culling programs, brutal and often ineffective lethal control. Animal Birth Control programs demonstrate that humane management is possible and effective over time — but require sustained investment and political will. The human responsibility for this crisis, stemming from millennia of domestication and breeding, implies a corresponding obligation to manage it humanely.