The future of more than 200 000 of Cape Town’s stray dogs has come into sharp focus after a three-year-old boy was killed by a pack of dogs in Philippi last week.
The City of Cape Town said it will work with the provincial Animal Welfare Forum to tackle the stray dog problem.
The newly established forum is made up of various animal groups including the SPCA, the Animal Welfare Society and Animal Rescue.
Mayoral committee member for safety and security JP Smith said the city had at least 230 000 stray dogs.
The process of catching and putting down the dogs and then disposing of their carcasses would cost the city R27 million, said Smith. For this reason wholesale impounding was not a viable option.
Instead, the city would work with the forum in identifying “problem areas”, conducting education campaigns around the importance of sterilising dogs and ensuring pets had identification tags. Once this had been done, the surplus strays would be “dealt with”, said Smith.
These decisions come after Philasanda Mbokothola, of Sweet Home Farm in Philippi, was mauled to death.
The dogs apparently dragged the boy from his home after his mother had gone to the toilet. She had allegedly left the front door open.
Residents claimed that it was a pack of stray dogs behind the attack. Hours later, residents, armed with planks, rocks and bricks hunted down dogs, killing at least three.
Cape of Good Hope SPCA chief executive Allan Perrins said autopsies on two of the dogs showed they choked to death on their blood after residents stoned, kicked and beat them. Their stomach contents contained chicken bones, rice and beetroot. But there were no traces of clothing or human flesh, making it unlikely that the dogs killed were those involved in the attack on the child.
The SPCA has since collected nearly 150 dogs from Sweet Home Farm. Many of these were strays, disease ridden, and too anti-social to be rehomed and would have to be put down.
He pointed out that several townships had an overpopulation of dogs. In Khayelitsha, the dogs outnumber the people by three to one. Many of these were, however, pets.
The biggest contributor to the overpopulation of stray dogs was that the dogs were not sterilised.
Perrins saiddogs were social creatures and in townships where they were not confined to properties, they would naturally gravitate toward each other and form packs.
The dogs then breed with each other, increasing the size of the pack.
Alicia Coleman, an inspector and kennel officer for Animal Welfare Society, said education and sterilisation ware the keys to solving the problem.
“If we can pull this off, it will be a positive stand,” said Coleman.
Coleman said people loved their pets but lacked information about sterilising their dogs. “Nobody should be denied the right to have an animal. People just need to be educated,” said Coleman. - Cape Argus