KOZHIKODE: Kozhikode city corporation will send 10 people for scientific training in dog-catching to tackle the increasing stray dog menace and to beef up the seven-member team in the city. Corporation officials said only Kozhikode district had professional dog-catchers and hence agencies from other districts also seek their service. The city corporation had last year identified seven people for training at Worldwide Veterinary Service (WVS) in Ooty, run with the help of UK-based non-governmental organisation Dogs Trust in association with the Nilgiris-based India Project for Animal and Nature (IPAN).
They were to implement the corporation’s Animal Birth Control (ABC) scheme. But after the dog menace became serious all over the State, the demand for the trained catchers increased and the corporation was finding it hard to get the service of their trained catchers to start the next phase of the ABC scheme here. “We could conduct a sterilisation camp for only 252 dogs in the city, which has around 55,000 stray dogs,” corporation’s ABC implementing Officer Dr Baby Kuriakose said. “We need more professional dog-catchers to effectively implement the project. Our mission is to train more people so that the bargaining tendency of these limited dog-catchers could come down.”
With the demand for dog-catchers going up, the corporation was finding it hard to get their service most of the time, he said. “We had even been forced to stop the camp,” Dr Kuriakose said. “The corporation had spent Rs 8,000 on training on each of the trainers but we were unable to take the project ford the way we wanted.” Another official from the Corporation pointed out that some of the dog catchers have started taking private orders for dog catching taking huge payments As per the plan, the corporation will send its persons to Ooty to train them in comprehensive stray animal catching programme using humane animal handling methods.
