Posted On: 2021-12-15 14:50:37
Imagine being alone on a street, a terrifying night and nowhere to go or find a safe place for shelter. One will definitely be terrified just by visualizing being in a dreadful situation like this. And this scenario is not just for one night. Every night, there is no comfortable bed to sleep on, no roof, lack of food or no food at all. The scariest would be to live alone, with injuries or health conditions and no one to look after.
All these sentences describe the everyday life of a stray animal, unaided, starved and neglected. When we say street animals, people picture a loud barking dog chasing to bite someone, or a cat trying to sneak into a house to keep her kittens safe. There are hundreds of stray animals, not just dogs and cats, but others like cows, donkeys and bullocks and other animals as well, who are abandoned when they are old, injured and unable to serve anymore or produce milk. These voiceless creatures spend their days in search of food & shelter and sometimes by sleeping on the cold pavements beside the road.
This scenario continues to be so since years after humans initiated urbanization.
The troubles faced by strays.
A lot of animals on the street have to spend days and nights without food. Every meal is a huge, unsolved question for them. They do not know what will be their next meal; or how will they even find it. These poor lives are malnourished as they forage for food, often going days without finding any food that will be unsuitable for consumption. This leads to diseases like- distemper, leptospirosis, salmonella and toxoplasmosis, to name a few.
They live with all these diseases and most of them are left untreated.
Many pets are abandoned by people who formerly bought or adopted them. The major reasons were: people unable to spend the needed amount of time with their pets for their cleaning and grooming activities, and to manage the expenses.
Abandoned pets are deemed to be strays, due to this uncertainty of being devoid of food and shelter, these animals often roam on the streets in search of a home. Many times, they meet with dreadful accidents and even lose life terribly.
COVID-19 has added to all the miseries of these adorable lives. Multiple lockdowns have affected both people and animals, alike around the world. People maintained social distance and stayed at home, restaurants and cafes were shut resulting in the strays losing their only source of food and shelter.
Foster homes at multiple places reported that the number of cats and dogs increased suddenly when they reached the foster homes' doorstep in search of their basic needs.
A few, fortunate ones were adopted during the lockdown; as people saw that the strays were suffering from a lack of food and shelter due to the virus.
But the post lockdown time was again miserable. The people who adopted stray dogs or cats during the lockdown abandoned them because then they did not have the time to look after them.
The sufferings of these innocent animals are endless. Abandoning by the only human that these strays consider their everything is heartbreaking for them.
Solutions to their tragedies
The hope for protecting these innocent lives is not in despair.
There are multiple ways we can help the hopeless strays and make their environment as well as their health safe and secured.
Non Profit Organizations and Foster Homes
Many Non Profit Organizations (NGOs) and foster homes work 24*7 to take care of the street animals. Foster Homes for animal welfare tend to the ill and injured animals and keep them till they are recovered or adopted. They also conduct drives for neutering, vaccinating the animals, providing them with other health facilities, and conducting adoption drives. NGOs also actively spread awareness about the importance of animal welfare to the public and conduct charity events and fundraisers to finance their expenses.
What we can do as individuals is: Donate funds to these NGOs and health care centres so the treatment and help towards the strays continue.
Child Help Foundation
Website:https://in.childhelpfoundation.in/assets/img/home/life-land-1.jpg
Contact: 9819900180
Animals matter to me
Website: https://www.amtmindia.org/
Contact: 9920737737
The Welfare of Stray Dogs-
Website: https://www.wsdindia.org/
Contact: 22 64222838
The Feline Foundation contact:
Website: https://www.thefelinefoundation.com
contact: 09324524373
The Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC), Mumbai.
Informing BMC employees about stray cattle and other animals suffering from diseases or for animals that are suitable for sterilisation would be a great way to help strays. BMC has been feeding, treating and providing shelter with help of NGOs and health care centres for years.
Under the Animal Birth Control Programme, stray dog sterilisation is being executed, by BMC staff and NGOs.
Reflective Radium Belts
A recent survey by the People for Cattle in India revealed that 20 to 30 % of road accidents in the country are because of stray cattle and animals roaming around freely on highways and roads with no lights. A solution to this has already been adopted in places like Delhi, Jharkhand and Anand(Gujarat) and parts of Maharashtra. Reflective radium belts are tied around the necks of cattle and animals on the streets; the glow of the radium can be seen from a distance that will avoid road accidents. The reflective tapes ensure long-distance visibility for the drivers.
Spay and Neuter
Spaying for females and neutering for male stray animals is the best possible way of curbing the stray population. This will ensure that no more unfortunate new little ones will be born that have to go through all the hassles and struggles of living the tough homeless life on the roads.
We can do multiple things on personal levels to help the strays. It can be feeding a few stray animals regularly or contacting those who do it on a daily basis for help. If you find an animal injured, take it to a foster home or call for medical aid. Simply adopting a cat, dog or any other stray animal; and taking care of its vaccinations, food and giving it loads of love will change their life beautifully.
Filaantro
Donating to those who help stray animals makes it even better. Filaantro is an online crowdfunding platform that raises funds for multiple causes, and helping stray animals is one of them. Help the voiceless creatures to live a happy, healthy and beautiful life.
Visit our link to support the voiceless lives.
https://filaantro.org/fundraiser/view/help-animals
https://filaantro.org/fundraiser/view/Help-Hanuman-Ashram-Gaushala
Author : Anjali Patel
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