Companion Animals and Neutering

Luke Gamble MRCVS

Worldwide Veterinary Service

Our Companions

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So what’s the problem?

In a nutshell

• Pets allowed to roam

• ‘Community Dogs’

• True Strays

Where do street dogs come from?

•Migration from surrounding areas

•Translocation of dogs from other areas

•Natural reproduction in roaming dogs

•Abandoned owned dogs

•Abandoned unwanted litters of pups

Other Sources of dogs

What’s the problem?

• Transmission of disease to humans• Injury and fear to humans and other

animals• Public nuisance • Animal welfare concern

Where is it an issue?

Mexico

India

Thailand

Zambia

Uganda

Peru

Global community for animal welfare

• Same problems all over the world

• Key thing is to pool resources in working out best practice for helping ‘community animals’

Why not just kill the dogs?• Inhumane, dangerous

- and INEFFECTIVE

• New dogs migrate in to fill the ecological niche• These new dogs are not rabies vaccinated or

sterilised

• Religious and cultural taboos• Killing causes great distress to the general

public - especially children• Negative publicity

Impounding street dogs

Expensive, need large facilities and staff

Constant catching - not net change in community numbers

Huge animal welfare issues if not done well

Don’t help a street dog problem

Having said that…

• Shelters can be great to help individual animals

• Re-homing centres• Raise awareness and public education• But are very tough to manage and run

Dumping Dogs

• Does not address cause• Most dogs return to their territory • Influx of new dogs leads to greater

aggression and fighting over territory• Neighbours will return the favour!

So how do we crack it ?

It’s as easy as TNVR… (ABC for short)

• Sterilisation to reduce population • Anti-Rabies vaccination• Treatment of other diseases eg scabies.• Release to original location following recovery from

surgery • Public awareness• Collaboration with local authorities

How to do it - a few case studies

LSPCA Malawi

HART - Nepal

Zambia

Richard

The International Training Centre

• A unique global resource - pooling knowledge from charities working on the front line of animal welfare from all over the world

WVS

• On average we send one vet per week• We help over 200 animal charities every year• Send out £10,000 worth of veterinary medicine

and equipment every week• Last year 14,648 (40 a day) animals directly

treated by WVS teams

Thank you!