‘Whom to call when a dog bites’: On International Dog Day, a closer look at India’s stray dog crisis

As the world celebrates International Dog Day today, India finds itself grappling with a difficult, often polarising question: what place do stray dogs hold in our cities and neighbourhoods? With the Supreme Court earlier ordering the removal of strays from the streets, later modifying its stance, the debate around coexistence, safety, and animal welfare is sharper than ever.

Animal rescuer and certified rabies educator Pratik Sudhakaran, who has spent years working on the ground with strays, believes that India’s struggle is less about the dogs themselves and more about the system that is supposed to manage them.

“The Animal Birth Control (ABC) programme usually fails because there is no consistency in standards or work. Government-run facilities often have poor conditions, and most monitoring committees don’t have people who understand dogs or the standards required,” he explains.

“It is physically intense, risky work with very little pay, and inhumane treatment of animals is often reported. When the government hasn’t run these centres properly, how can they say the ABC programme doesn’t work?”

Whom to call?

Pratik points out that India has no government-run animal shelters to deal with issues related to street animals. The absence of a clear emergency response system for rabies has only deepened the crisis.

“Every time there’s a dog-biting incident, people don’t know whom to call,” he says.

“Rabies is preventable if controlled early, and WHO has laid out comprehensive strategies. But we’ve had no proper monitoring or response until now. We only react when things go out of hand, instead of preventing them.”

Pratik argues that the existing Animal Birth Control (ABC) centres could serve this missing role. “All ABC centres already have a catching team, strong kennels, and dedicated manpower who are supposedly trained in dog catching and humane handling. Rabies-suspect dogs, being risky to manage, should be handled by these trained catchers and kept in a safe environment for observation. Essentially, ABC centres should also act as an emergency response for dog-bite incidents, so that the dog can be removed safely from the streets before more people are bitten. If you check most of the dog-bite incidents in the past, more casualties were the consequence of either delayed or no response from government authorities whenever such cases were reported.”

‘Feeders can help’

While dog feeders are often stigmatised, Pratik believes they are crucial allies.

“Feeders regularly interact with dogs, know them by area, and can help with sterilisation and vaccination drives. They can also notice abnormal behaviour early, which helps isolate risky cases before incidents occur. Yet, they are ostracised.”

Abandoned pets and breeders

Pratik highlights another overlooked issue—the role of humans themselves. Abandonment and unregulated breeding are major contributors to the stray population. “Irresponsible dog owners leave pets when they become a liability. Backyard breeders exploit demand and there are no systems to monitor them. We don’t even track abandoned pets back to their owners.”

Further, hospital records often blur the picture:

“When you go for anti-rabies shots after a bite, hospitals don’t record whether it was a pet or a stray dog. So official bite data lumps both together. Authorities also rarely monitor or isolate the biting dog, which WHO protocol requires.”

For Pratik, the frustration is not new. “I have raised these concerns for over ten years, but it has mostly fallen on deaf ears. I kept bringing them up because I wanted to prevent this scenario. Sadly, it is happening now.”