Opinion: Why India’s Stray Dog Ruling is a Disaster in the Making
Stray dogs at a metro station in Delhi. The city reported 49 rabies cases between January and June this year. Photograph: Manish Swarup/AP
Note August 22, 2025: The Honourable Supreme Court of India has just put a stay on the order to remove all dogs from streets. Deb Jarrett is CEO of Dharamsala, a sanctuary campaigning to save the dogs of India. Written earlier this month, here is her first person account on what’s it like to help dogs in dangerous times (link to original article here).
“I have been doing this a long time — 17 years to be exact. If you believe Malcolm Gladwell, I have definitely completed the 10,000 hours to deem me an expert. Don’t get me wrong, I am always learning, but my experience on this topic — yes, even though I am an American woman — qualifies me to write an opinion piece on the Supreme Court ruling ordering the removal of all stray dogs from the streets of Delhi and their relocation to shelters within eight weeks.
After living and working in India for so many years, I have seen and experienced many rash decisions made by the government that have no implementation or execution plan in place. The current ruling is different. Are there packs of dogs that kill people in India? Yes. Is rabies still an issue? Yes. But none of this is new, and the Indian government has done nothing to change it.
India has the highest number of stray dogs in the world and the highest incidence of human deaths by rabies. I’ve known this since 2008! In Dharamsala, it was not until 2015 that the local hospitals even had the proper post-bite protocol available to save someone’s life if they were bit. To this day, many towns still do not.
No National Rabies Plan
It was not until 2021 that the Indian government made rabies a notifiable disease. This was an exciting moment. We finally thought a government plan would be put in place with funding, resources, and infrastructure to mass vaccinate dogs, along with educational programs. But this was a pipe dream. A plan was written called National Action Plan for Dog Mediated Rabies Elimination (NAPRE) and distributed – and that was it. Nothing else.
International organizations full of scientists who have experience running sterilization and rabies program for stray animals around the world have been ready to offer up their help to implement humane tested strategies to lower population of street dogs, eliminate rabies, run community program to teach people to co-exist with dogs, and run successful adoption programs, but as far as I know, no help has been taken from any of the organizations.
Luckily, some of these groups work independently or with local governments and NGOs to help grow the existing programs through training, such as ours at Dharamsala Animal Rescue, but that is it.
The Burden on NGOs
Before this ruling was made, I have heard time and time again that ABC (Animal Birth Control is what catch and release spay/neuter/vaccinate is called in India) has failed. Once again, just like with NAPRE, documents are written and rules are made but there are no implementation or execution plans to go along with it – and of course – no budget.
The majority of ABC work is implemented by NGOs in India. Some receive reimbursement for the medicine and surgical supplies used for a surgery, but this does not cover staff salaries, land purchasing/rent, ambulances, training, etc – it is just a fraction of what is needed to run such a complex program. This leads to huge efforts in fundraising by every NGO with the government imposing huge restrictions on receiving foreign funds.
Veterinarians are not trained in veterinary school to run an ABC program. There is no government veterinary departments who are trained to run these programs or even focus on them. All of the reliance is put on Nonprofits/NGOs. So this means, at our small NGO, we have to hire vets, get them trained by sending them to international programs available in India. It then can take months of practice for them to go from extremely slow at performing surgery to eventually quick enough so they can do multiple sterilizations each day.
Then, just when they are really starting to make a difference, they will receive a job offer from the Government Veterinary Department – not to work at their ABC clinic, but to go count sheep in some remote area of Himachal Pradesh, because that is so much more important than dealing with the amount of dogs on the street. In cities, entry government jobs can be working at a factory chicken farm or inspecting meat at a goat slaughter house. Apparently, also more important then dealing with an endemic issue.
Science Back Programs Work – No Mauling in Dharamsala
In the 17 years I have been doing this, I have seen the compassionate action of the Indian people soar when it comes to caring for the street dogs. When I first started doing this, I knew maybe two feeder families in all of Dharamsala. Today, there are too many to count. They are pouring their own personal funds into feeding dogs each day – sometimes over 100 dogs. They work with us to make sure they are sterilized and vaccinated, and get medical care when needed. Granted, it is not perfect, there are still many doghaters, but because of our work, Tibet Charity, Peepal Farm, Pashuholic, and other private citizens, we have never had a kid get mauled by a street dog.
The Education Gap and Everyday Cruelty
In addition to not planning a proper roll out of an ABC program by the government, there is no plan to educate people on what to do if they get bit. There are no government education programs to teach kids to safely interact with dogs.
Many are still taught to throw rocks and run. Many older women just walk down the street swatting their hand bag at every dog they see. Grown men kick them, or run into them for fun with their motorcycles. Cars don’t seem to even see the dogs on the road – they just smash right into them – leaving places like DAR to try to pick up the pieces and save their lives through emergency amputations, but at least half of the time, they do not even make it. It does not take a big imagination to see why some of these dogs turn to biting humans. The more amazing thing to witness is how dogs who have suffered so much cruelty, still wag their tails and accept our help when injured.
One time, I watched a driver in a traffic jam in Mcleod Ganj just roll right into a dog that he clearly saw. I reached into the car, grabbed his shirt and began punching him. I then dialed the Superintendent of Police whose number I had due to all of the cases against me by a bunch of crooks who had stolen lakhs of money from the shelter, but the dog was fine and the guy was in shock and shamed and I decided to let him go. FYI – I was diagnosed with PTSD from all of this in 2018.
You can Sterilize as Many Dogs as you can but without Education, Nothing Changes
In our education programs, I have met kids who are traumatized by what they have seen done to animals. I have met kids who were devastated by the unnecessary deaths of dogs they fed, or pets that died due to lack of vaccination.
They have seen everything I see – dogs run over by cars, dogs put in garbage bags and dumped in rivers, dogs given poison only to die in front of a shop foaming at the mouth, skinny puppies shaking and quivering dying of distemper, dogs missing fur and full of scabs with untreated mange, dogs set on fire, dogs getting boiling water thrown at them.
In 2023, The United Nations recognized that children have the right to be free from exposure to violence against animals. This ruling will do the exact opposite. Kids will see dogs being picked up by catchers who put wire implements around their necks and then throw them into vehicles, and worse.
During an education program in a school we ran a couple of years ago, we had a question and answer session at the end. One girl who was eight years old told us a story while I held the microphone for her. She told us that her family fed a female dog who lived outside their home. They loved her. Then one day, she gave birth to six puppies and the family was worried the puppies would die from being outside in the cold, so they let the dog come inside. The family did the best they could to keep them warm and the mom fed. Then one by one, the puppies died.
The little girl told me that the mom dog howled in grief for days. This would send her to her bedroom where she put her head under the covers and cried while the mom dog cried. She then started crying in the room full of 50 of her classmates. I hugged her. I told her how sorry I was. She said she felt better just to be able to tell others who she knew would care. It broke my heart. It also made me realize how important this program was.
Adults were not born cruel, hating dogs, they were taught it.
Adoption – No National Campaigns
And where are the national advertising campaigns to adopt street dogs? Why are breed dogs promoted on every brand in the entire country? Where is the government in this?
Now breed dogs are adopted and dumped on city streets when they are no longer wanted. Shelters are already full of unwanted Indian dogs, and now they are full of unwanted breed dogs. In our town, dogs at shelters seem to be seen as tainted – a belief that something must be wrong with them. We have have had a pure bred Labrador living with us for over three years that no one will adopt. We need to send dogs to other countries and raise thousands of dollars to do so just so we can find homes.
Why This Will Fail
Now imagine, here we are with a ruling to move an estimated million street dogs off the road and into shelters in 8 weeks, when absolutely none of the above, the humane and science-backed solution to the stray dogs’ problem, has ever been started by National Government Departments. If ABC failed, it is on them.
And this will fail to, cause once again, no actionable plan, no budget, no infrastructure. Where exactly are these shelters the dogs are supposed to live? There are no government-run shelters.
Who will do the catching? After running catch and release programs for years, I know it is impossible to catch 100% of the dogs and definitely not that amount of dogs in eight weeks.
Where are the small animal government vets that will care for these dogs? Many believe that this is just a cover for mass culling.
Hope & Fear – A Nation Rising
I have to say, watching the people of India come by the thousands to protest in person and online – everyone from other politicians to celebrities, NGOs and feeders has been heartwarming. I send each and every one of them all of the strength and fight they need to stop this and to force the government to put real plans into place backed in science. I hope they finally accept strategy and implementation help from organizations who have real world experience.
My fear is that, even if this is stopped, and nothing really comes in its place, this will happen again and again. And my heart breaks for all of these dogs, these dogs who I fell in love with in 2008 and have been trying to help ever since. My heart also breaks for everyone who loves these dogs like I do and for everyone who knows that this is just not the way humans should behave to solve problems.
In just two days since this ruling, two other states have decided they want to follow suit: Rajasthan and Goa. Himachal may be next, but I hope not.”
