Part One
1860 – that was the year when the City of Madras, in southern India, started to kill the street dogs. At first they killed just one or two a week. Over one hundred years later, in 1964, the City (now officially renamed Chennai) was killing as many as 300 street dogs every week. They killed them in horrendous ways—not necessarily out of cruelty—though expediency can be a form of cruelty.
In 1964, a small group of people was pouring over dusty files in the basement of the City offices—to discover these facts.
Captain Sundaram, his wife Usha Sundaram and their son, who is now Dr. Chinny S. Krishna, Chairman of Blue Cross of India, were seeking the truth—there was then no Freedom of Information Act. They were appalled to discover that the killing of dogs had begun over one hundred years previously and was still continuing. They wondered—if killing dogs is a solution, how come nothing has ever been solved by this solution? The problem in fact was always growing worse—with more and more dogs needing to be killed.
“Something was wrong…” recalls Dr. Krishna, "The Blue Cross was convinced that if a procedure designed to control or eliminate street dogs had not showed positive results after implementing it for over a 100 years, something was wrong. It was also convinced that where a dog had to be killed because it was overly aggressive or suspected to be rabid, the killing must be done in a more humane manner."
Proposing an alternative to "catch and kill"
Blue Cross proposed to the City of Madras that a more humane and more effective program be undertaken--to catch/spay/neuter and return street animals, also giving them a rabies shot before returning them to the site where they had been picked up. This was offered as a solution that would stop the increase in the city's animal population--and would also address the serious problem of rabies. The program would be called Animal Birth Control or ABC, because it would be "as easy as ABC".
"The City of Madras rejected the proposal outright," Dr. Krishna remembers, and the City continued to pursue its policy of killing thousands of street animals in very inhumane ways, primarily by electrocution.
The launch of ABC
Since the City was at that time unwilling to help, Blue Cross embarked on its own ABC program. As they rescued injured street animals and treated them at their clinic, they began to spay and give a rabies vaccination, to every female dog or cat before returning them to the exact site where they had been picked up. At the same time, they encouraged owners to have their pets spayed and vaccinated and provided this service free of charge.
In the early years they focused on spaying the females, and only later on began neutering the males as well.
In their April/May/June newsletter for 1966, they started a fund-raising drive to come up with funds for a “free spaying center”. Their target was Rs. 25,000 ($500) to enable them to build the center.
Dr. Krishna writes: "Any female dog or cat we rescued from the streets was spayed and returned. We picked up animals from all over the city and the outskirts.
"Madras City is a district by itself, the area we were covering was about 200 square kilometers (77 square miles) when we first started.
"A team of vets (usually two, sometimes three, sometimes just one) from the Madras Veterinary College would come to the Blue Cross once a week - usually Saturdays or Sundays--and later on both days to spay all the rescued dogs that had recovered and also owned animals that were brought to us.
"In the early days, about 10% of the dogs were owned and later on maybe around 20%. We made no charge for owned animals. All animals adopted out were spayed/neutered, if adults. For puppies and kittens, adopters had to sign an undertaking to bring the animal back when about six months old to be spayed or neutered."
Where did the idea of spay/neuter/return come from? “It just seemed the right thing to do,” Dr. Krishna explains, “These animals had survived on the street through their most difficult period of puppyhood, and it seemed reasonable to believe that they could certainly continue to live there after the ABC.”
And what is the real point of having an ABC program? “The entire idea of ABC is to control and reduce - eventually to near zero - the number of dogs on the streets. We got them there in the first place - it is our duty to remedy the situation with the minimum trauma to the dogs.” Dr. Krishna adds, “It cannot be achieved overnight.”
Discovering the dynamics of the street dog population
It was only much later, that there came an understanding of the dynamics of street animal populations. Since they were pioneering ABC, naturally not everything was fully understood in the beginning. At first there was an expectation that, since so many animals were being spayed, the street dog numbers would plummet. Later on Dr. Krishna began to understand that every area has a holding capacity—and the number of dogs will increase until that level has been reached. He credits Merritt Clifton, of Animal People Newspaper, for clarity about this concept.
“I felt that every female spayed meant one less dog that could have a litter. I think it was only after about 15 years that I read somewhere about populations that could be sustained by a system. The 70% rule came much, much later, most probably from Merritt in 1997. I had been in contact with Merritt for many, many years prior to this, and I knew that some sort of "critical mass" had to be done to see any reduction, but had no idea about 70% for a long time.”
The 70% rule states that only after at least 70% of the street dogs in a given area have been spayed/neutered will there be a stabilization of the population, followed over time by a reduction. Without achieving a 70% spay/neuter rate, the street animal population will not decrease, but will bounce back again to reach the level of its carrying capacity.
Every area has a carrying capacity—the number of animals the area can support—based on the availability of food, water, and shelter.
So spaying/neutering a few animals won’t make as much difference as one might hope. To make a decisive impact, one must spay/neuter 70% or more of the animals in an area.
Programs to clean up the streets, reducing the amount of garbage in an area, can be a big help too.
ABC catches on
For the next thirty years until 1995, Blue Cross dedicated around 70 vet hours every month to ABC, without any government support.
Sometimes the situation could be disheartening: “Sadly, most of the dogs that we had spayed and vaccinated at great expense were subsequently killed by the City. This was true from 1964 till 1995.”
As Dr. Krishna describes their program, "Most of the rescued animals had been picked up after being involved in road accidents, or they were sick animals picked up from city streets; they were spayed/neutered after they had recovered. None were caught just for spaying or neutering."
"In 1966, we had aimed to do 100 that year, mostly dogs that we had rescued which were spayed and re-homed or returned to where they had been picked up. From 1968 onwards, we were doing over 700 each year, but more importantly, getting several hundred each year to be done by their owners at the Madras Veterinary College.
“The charge at the College was a nominal fee of maybe Rs.10 (twenty U.S. cents) in the earlier years to about Rs. 22 (about forty U.S. cents) in the late nineties. [Many people in Tamil Nadu only make around $500 a year…Editor.] "In addition, we had raised much awareness on this issue and many, many private vets began advising their clients to get their animals spayed/neutered."
Despite criticism and daunting challenges, over these thirty years, Blue Cross held fast to the principle that the life of each street dog or cat has value, and that it is essential to control their population without killing the animals. Blue Cross were the pioneers of the no-kill movement.
To be continued in Part Two (1994-2009)
What you can do
For more information about Blue Cross of India, please click here.
To visit the website of Animal People Newspaper, please click here.
To make a tax-exempt donation to the U.S branch of Blue Cross, please click here.
Photos: Blue Cross of India / Narayanan Hariharan / These are dogs adopted by Dr. Nanditha Krishna and Dr. Chinny Krishna. Descriptions provided by Dr. Krishna.
Top photo: Dr. Chinny Krishna with one of his dogs, Bhairav. Dr. Krishna writes, "Bhairav is the name of Shiva as an ascetic, and he is always shown with a dog accompanying him. Bhairav is the dog we found at the Ganesha temple (as a middle-aged adult) in late 2006. He climbs trees, gates, and mews. Brian Faulkner [the British dog expert] thinks he is a genuine primitive dog."
Second photo: "Tripod (the black and tan one) - she may be about three or four - came to the Blue Cross as a rescue after being run over by a motor cycle. We had to amputate her left rear leg. She spent several months at the Blue Cross office since I was so sure she would be adopted by someone since she is really one of the friendliest dogs I have had the pleasure to know. Finally, I brought her home in early 2008."
Third Photo: "Rusty - literally landed in our home in early 2007, having been thrown over our compound wall as a tiny little puppy."
Fourth photo: Lily was a street dog rescued by an American, Laurel Herman, then adopted by the Krishnas. To read Lily's story, click here.