At a town-hall meeting last week in West Bay, Minister Tara Rivers listened to her constituents, once again, complaining about a problem that would seem simple enough to resolve.
In fact, the government could take a lesson from the dogs themselves: To corral roving dogs, employ roving dogcatchers. That may sound overly simple for government – no committees, no subcommittees, no PwC reports – but it will work.
To date, the West Bay police have received 27 calls this year about ferocious dogs roaming threateningly throughout district neighborhoods. The number of callers, of course, is reassuringly small but equally meaningless. Common sense tells us that nearly every West Bayer is a potential caller. They just haven’t bothered to pick up the phone.
Although the police can issue citations to people who fail to secure their dogs, the dogs people are complaining about don’t “belong” to anyone. “Owners” don’t own them. They’re strays, breeding the next generation with fecundity, fertility and abandon.
The West Bay police, as if they don’t have enough headaches with gangs and guns and drugs, have “requested” that the Department of Agriculture come and set traps in West Bay – a wholly inadequate solution to a real issue of public health and wellbeing.
The problem goes beyond just being a nuisance. These aren’t packs of ferocious Chihuahuas, shih tzus and dachshunds; they are bigger dogs, including nasty mongrels and some aggressive breeds such as pit bulls. These are nobody’s “best friends.”
The Cayman Islands is fortunate, thanks to its animal importation regulations, that the rabies virus is nonexistent here. Once rabies gets a foothold in an animal population, it can quickly become the scourge of an entire country.
(Not to scare anyone, but in India – home to the world’s largest population of roving feral dogs – more than 80,000 people in the city of Mumbai reported being bitten last year. An estimated 20,000 die annually in India of rabies infections.)
We don’t want to leave the impression that West Bay is the only district being inundated with these packs of wild dogs. We see them everywhere from the Esterley Tibbetts Highway (for some reason, they’re the only ones who seem to like hanging around the dump), to Bodden Town, East End and North Side. In truth, this is an island-wide reproduction problem that is getting measurably worse every 63-day gestation cycle.
The Cayman Islands presents itself as an upscale destination, welcoming both worldly travelers and investor dollars. Having snarly junkyard dogs roving our streets does not re-enforce what Ministers Moses Kirkconnell (tourism) and Marco Archer (finance) would like to promulgate as our “brand image.”
We applaud Minister Rivers for hosting last week’s West Bay meeting at which these issues were aired. By coincidence, Ms. Rivers’s portfolio also includes unemployment issues. May we offer a suggestion?: Start hiring dogcatchers.
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The next headline we will see is when people start taking matters into their own hands.
A National Dog Licence scheme would help.
Every dog could be ‘chipped’ and the ‘licenced’ owner recorded.
If people are not being responsible owners they can be held accountable.
But those that are would be benefit from the system.
with every animal chipped a dog warden does not even need to catch the dog – read the chip at distance, warn the owner, warn the owner again, issue small fine, issue bigger fine
There could be an annual fee and neutered and spayed animals could be exempted, could even require a vet certificate to show that heart-worm meds upto date.
The recent case where a dog bit a cyclist should never have gone to court – it could have been dealt with as a summary police issue with a standardised fine.
About 20 years ago the Israelis had a problem with people dumping dogs in the Negev desert outside the holiday resort of Eilat.
The dogs were in danger of wiping out several already endangered species in the area so they used them as training aids for their army snipers. Problem solved.
We don’t have an army but RCIPS has armed response units. Just a thought.
Great Idea Andy, But isn’t it a bit much to expect the CIG to implement something like that when they can’t even figure how to separate trash.
The problem, Andy Gray, is that those people who would adhere to a national to licensing program aren’t the ones whose dogs are a problem. Those individuals refuse to spay and neuter, because they believe they are robbing their animals of their manhood and the right to reproduce. You may also see an increase in animal abandonment by those unwilling to pay a fee. David Williams is right to an extent. Some dogs will become too vicious to trap humanely or rehabilitate. They will have to be destroyed. I wouldn’t trust our police force to shoot them though. I have no objection to firearms, but a bunch of guys who don’t maintain their physical fitness, probably don’t practice at the shooting range, frequently enough to be trusted to discharge a weapon. Why are we applauding Tara Rivers? So far, she hasn’t done anything. Holding meetings with constituents is a requirement of her job, and realistically barely useful in the face of prior reported problems. Concrete action is what needs to be taken.