The Problem Of Stray Dogs Essay Example

One Sunday morning, I was headed to volunteer at an animal shelter, East Lake Pet Orphanage, in Dallas, close to where I live. As I was walking on the sidewalk where I was usually dropped off, I took note of the three small dogs that walked by me without collars. I noticed that they were filthy and looked like they had not been bathed in months. At first, I thought that their owner might have been close by, so I then proceeded to look around to see if their owners were nearby, but no one was close by them except for me. It was almost completely vacant where I was. I found it strange there were that many dogs without an owner, and I made the inference that they were being neglected from the looks of their dirtiness. If someone cared, he or she would have told a shelter or have taken them to his or her house and taken the matters into their own hands. When I had made it to the animal shelter, I told the veterinarians and staff about my experience, and they had said that there were a lot of stray dogs wandering around the community near the shelter for a long period already. This surprised me, as I have never seen any of them near my house, but there may have been where I was living. This is what initially sparked my interest in researching feral dogs and their effects.

Stray dogs pose a danger to the communities and public health since they are often neglected and left alone in the streets without proper care. There are many negative effects of dogs, such as disease and bites. These effects are not an issue in a single community, but a problem in the United States as well. According to “Animal Exposure and Human Plague, United States, 1970-2017” (2019), “a cluster of pneumonic plague in Colorado was linked to a dog with pneumonic plague, and a recent case of canine plague resulted in the potential exposure of >116 persons at a veterinary clinic” (Campbell et al. 2272). Dogs need to be taken care of properly and the problem needs to be addressed, but many individuals lack the knowledge necessary for recognizing it. This led to my research question: What are the negative effects on urban communities in the US due to stray dogs? To further analyze the problem regarding stray dogs, I researched the effects, potential dangers, risks of stray dogs within a community, and the issues that shelters may face.

According to research, there are various effects of feral dogs; however, the main effect is disease transmission. This is seen in cases such as when “more than 50% of patients in the United States with plague since 1970 had animal interaction that might have directly or indirectly led to their exposure to Y. pestis” (Campbell et al. 2272). Many patients must be contracting diseases due to interactions with dogs, indirect or direct. It is helpful to encourage the understanding of the various ways in which animal exposure could increase the risk for infection and disease could enhance prevention messages. Another issue is that feral canines may carry different diseases or even more than one disease. Some of them may maintain diseases such as rabies, leptospirosis, demodicosis, toxoplasmosis, and other zoonoses (Tkacheva et al. 1357). Furthermore, dogs are listed as a major concern based on their impact on disease transmission, such as rabies, and specifically dogs “off-leash” (Lepe et al. 13). Although the frequency of human plague in the United States has decreased, the proportion of human cases related to animal exposure has increased (Campbell et al. 2272). The use of gloves when handling animals would be very efficient when handling dogs to decrease the number of cases. The stray dog population can be reduced by supporting local animal shelters and adopting abandoned dogs.