The Bitey End of the Dog
A podcast dedicated to helping dogs with aggression issues. Michael Shikashio CDBC chats with experts from around the world on the topic of aggression in dogs!
The Bitey End of the Dog
From Chasing Safety to Creating Risk: The Truth About Mass Dog Roundups
A sweeping plan to remove India’s free-living dogs is racing ahead on shaky ground and the consequences could hit far beyond one country’s borders. We sit down with anthrozoologist and behavior expert Sindhoor Pangal to explain why uprooting tens of millions of dogs from their neighborhoods won’t curb bites or rabies, and how it actually increases danger for people and animals alike.
We trace India’s decades-long success with ABC-ARV—animal birth control plus anti-rabies vaccination—now a WHO-endorsed approach that drives down bites and stabilizes populations when implemented well. Sindhoor breaks down the vacuum effect that follows mass removal: rats and other scavengers surge, wildlife conflict grows, and unvaccinated dogs quickly repopulate. We explore the public health math behind herd immunity, the real-world limits of shelter capacity, and how crowded kennels can become hotbeds for zoonotic disease and antibiotic resistance.
Beyond numbers, we dig into the social lives of street dogs: loose, adaptive groups that coexist with people through routine, territory, and agency. Disrupt that fabric, and fear spreads. Stressed dogs labeled “biters” struggle in shelters; warier dogs remain on the street and pass defensive strategies to the next generation through social learning and epigenetic pathways. The alternative is both humane and practical: sustained ABC-ARV coverage, smarter waste management, simple environmental tweaks like moving feeding spots off busy walkways, and public education on safe interactions that slashes bite risk at a fraction of the cost.
If you care about dogs, public health, or evidence-based policy, this conversation matters. Help amplify the science, push back on panic-driven decisions, and support experts doing the work on the ground. Subscribe, share this episode with a friend, and leave a review to keep the conversation and the momentum going.
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Hi everyone. Welcome to this special episode of The Bitey End of the Dog, where we're going to be talking about a very concerning issue that's happening in India right now, where we're seeing the mass proposed roundup and even starting some of this roundup in awful outcomes for our free-living dog friends that are there. And I've got the amazing Centaur Bangal here with us, who is going to be talking us through the issues as well as what we can do to help this situation. Let me tell you a little bit about Cindor, who is a canine behavior consultant, a canine myotherapist, an anthrozoologist, and an engineer by qualification. She researches free-living dogs in Bangalore, India. She has presented her findings at major international conferences in the US, UK, and has conducted seminars in Europe, UK, and South America. She has been invited as an expert on several podcasts, including a few on NPR radio. She maintained a weekly column on dog behavior in the Bangalore Mirror for two years. She is a TEDx speaker, the author of the book Dog Knows. National Geographic calls her a great mind in the bookazine genius of dogs. She's currently the principal and director of Barks, that's B-H-A-R-C-S. And Barks offers a unique UK accredited level four diploma on canine biosociopsychology and applied ethology. So we certainly have an expert that knows what she's talking about when it comes to this matter. So welcome to the show, Sindor.
SPEAKER_00:Thank you so much for having me, Mike. I know that this is a sudden request, but it's a burning issue, and I um I really look forward to talking about it. I'm so grateful for this opportunity.
SPEAKER_01:Yes, thank you so much for being on. And it really is a pressing issue because we're talking about 60 to 100 million free-living dogs in India and the potential for such harm to happen to not only dogs, but the people that they share their lives with. So so can we start with just for the listeners, helping us understand how did this all come about? How did this all start? And what was the big push for this initiative to round up all these dogs and put them in shelters or or you know, make them see much more unfortunate outcomes?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. So just to give everybody a little bit of context on India and its relationship with free-living dogs, India has had free-living dogs for a very long time. Uh, we have lived this way for as long as uh memory serves us. In fact, even our mythology that dates back thousands of years uh talks about free living dogs. Um and for a for the longest of time, our constitution has protected them. And it was a mandate in India after the British Raj. The British Raj, uh, you know, we were colonized, and during the British Raj, um dogs were being picked up and culled uh for reasons that uh that that has to do with colonization, and we won't get into that, it's a whole topic. Um but uh once uh we won our freedom, uh there were cases made and data shown to the Indian government to say that this kind of removal of dogs and removing them and culling them uh was not really helping anyone, not just the dogs, but even the humans, rabies and bite risk was not really decreasing, dog population wasn't decreasing, and so animal birth control, which we abbreviate to ABC, and anti-rabies vaccine, which we abbreviate to ARV. So ABC ARV was proposed as the uh sensible, humane, effective solution in India, and which went on to so this was this was um gift by India, and I feel so sad to think that today that's being threatened in India because this was proposed in India, um, in South India, in uh the to the Madras Corporation with 30 years of data. And uh it was it then went on to become the WHO recommendation worldwide on how to deal with free living dogs and the potential zoonotic diseases, uh particularly rabies, uh, and uh reduce uh human-animal conflict in terms of bites. So, this was the climate that we lived in until um until August last year. Uh, there were efforts to do ABC ARB across the country. Some parts of the country had done much better than the others, showing tremendous results uh with extraordinary reduction in rabies and bites. Um, but not all parts of the country were following it. India has very poor track record of implementation of a lot of things, you know, good ideas but not done right. And then in August, and I think many of your listeners and you'll be able to relate to this, uh, we have entered a day and age where science seems to take a back seat and poor media reporting seems to take the front seat. So in August, the highest court of India, so a few judges from the highest court of India, which is the Supreme Court of India, decided to act on a erroneous media report about a child having died of rabies, and decided to act on this and say, you know what, we need to remove all dogs from certain parts of New Delhi, um, institutional parts and government offices and so on and so forth, and move them all into shelters. And uh there came a pushback to that saying that that doesn't make any sense. We don't have shelters because we have anywhere between 60 to 100 million dogs in this country, uh, each uh large city could have uh approximately say about a million dogs. Uh and so putting them in shelters, even putting 10% of them in shelters is just not viable. And so there was a pushback. And we expected uh them to see sense in that, that it made no fiscal sense. We don't have the ability to carry out this order, uh, but they really doubled down on it, and in November they kind of expanded that to the entire country, saying, you know what, we need to do this across the country, we need to remove the dogs. The case is still under hearing. We have a hearing uh in in on the 28th of January, and we expect that this is going to continue for a little bit longer. But the reason I kind of reached out to you and I reach out to the global community is that while this is in court, um people have been taking matters into their own hands, states have been taking matters into their own hands, small municipalities and cities and towns are beginning to act on this, and they're beginning to pick up the dogs with nowhere for them to go. And so that really is the burning issue. And the other burning issue that we can get into a little bit more is that, like I said, we have achieved great strides in the last 20 years, two decades of hard-won victories, of reducing rabies, reducing bites, and all of that is going to come undone by removing these dogs. And then the last thing that I also want to kind of discuss uh is the uh immense increased risk to public health in terms of an epidemic risk, which could even expand to a pandemic risk at some point. And so these are all things that we should be talking about.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, so it sounds like it came out of a lot like what happens in a lot of these situations is this mass hysteria from maybe just a one case or a handful of cases, which doesn't line up with the data. And and speaking of which, you know, why do you think that maybe they're not looking at history, right? So they say, you know, history repeats. And so we see we've seen these attempts at mass calling or roundups in other countries as well. Uh if you look at some of the the data or statistics, Bulgaria is one of those countries, Romania, Russia uh have tried, Turkey even have tried these type of campaigns where it's rounding up the dogs or putting them somewhere, and we see an increase in all of the issues they're trying to resolve. And and this since this is an aggression podcast, we can certainly talk about that as well, the bites and the increase in aggression and changes in behavior as we go along in the show. But why do you think uh there's there's sort of this ignorance of the data and what's happened, you know, not only in India and as a representation of what works and what doesn't, but other countries. And we have to be concerned about how other countries might see this hysteria and say, oh, maybe we should look at doing the same in ours because there's so supposedly this problem, but nobody's looking at the data on what's been tried. What do you think is going on there?
SPEAKER_00:Aaron Ross Powell So I think it may be for the same reasons that most of our politicians across the world uh and and and people in power seem to be uh following suit on this, which is uh ignoring the science in favor of their personal beliefs. Um and I think this is this is this is not re it's about personality issues, really. I think that's what it's coming down to, which is not the way governance should be. It should not be about personality issues, it should not be about your beliefs. You don't like dogs and you're sitting in the highest court of the country, you can't flex your power to say, I don't like them, so I'd like to see them removed, and I don't care for the science of it. But I think that's what it is, because uh the last uh towards the end of last last year and early this year, our lawyers have been presenting the science to the court. So we've had uh all of the best lawyers in India making excellent arguments, working closely with the scientists. I've been in touch with many of them to say, look, we this is not just a passion-based argument, this is not a love-based argument, although there should be room for those kind of arguments. Uh nobody questions when there's a hate-based argument, but when you make a love-based argument, there are you know big red flags all over. But we're we're refraining from that and saying, look, we still need to look at the science of it because India has tried culling for more than a hundred years, and we have data to show that this does not work in our favor. Um but uh there has just been a complete disregard for it, almost uh uh a disdain for it, a disdain for science. And uh I think this is almost uh, you know, you're probably facing similar questions. I think our power structures are showing their cracks, right? Where it's failing. And uh and this is really a bigger conversation, it's quite scary. So some of the arguments that we have made is about the science and about uh the dogs and the bites and rabies and zoonoses and public health. But some of the other arguments that our lawyers have also made is about the legal systems being bypassed, you know, the financial feasibility of this. So there are a lot of other questions also that come up here. It's not just about dogs. Um, and I think you'll see the parallels there, right?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, yes. Uh you know, speaking of the financial aspect, I can't imagine. You know, if you see the shelters here in the States, you see how how full it can feel when it's just 100 dogs or 200 dogs, and the immense labor that's involved in just handling that many dogs, and then you just multiply that exponentially. I mean, 60 million dogs, I even 10% of that, where do you put that many dogs? How do you do it efficiently? How do you do that when you're thinking about welfare? I mean, it's just an impossible task in my mind. So I can see that I just don't understand how they can think it's possible to house that many dogs in any circumstance or even round up that many dogs. I mean, if you multiply that, if you look at those numbers, but um Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:So it's not just uh the welfare issues and doing it efficiently and so on and so forth, right? I mean, you bring up that aspect of it, and and as dog people and dog lovers, that that kind of comes to mind, the first thing that comes to mind. Uh of course, there is uh the the practical aspect of it, which is that we don't even have shelters to put them in. We don't have the necessary shelters. And if you're going to put money into building these shelters, we have done the math on that. The cost is so high to do that, that in a country like India, it begs the question why don't you use that money then to feed the people of India who don't have food? Why don't you use it to fix the air quality in the national capital of the country, which is which is a joke at this point. So there is that. And then there is a third angle, which is when you when you house so many animals in a high density um environment like that, it creates a s a hotbed for diseases. So we need strict protocols on um quarantining and uh you know the worker protocols, which doesn't exist in India. And if those diseases are zoonotic diseases, meaning they are diseases that can pass on to human beings, uh, that is extremely dangerous. Now the other dangerous angle that comes into play there is also uh India is also uh now being reported as having an extremely high antibiotic resistance amongst the human beings, which means that we incubate superbugs. And so uh we are likely to create a high intensity uh epidemic risk. And given the climate change um uh disasters that we are seeing, with the kind of floods that we are seeing, it it creates a hotbed for an uh for epidemics to start out. And the worst part of this is if it's an epidemic with a novel virus, um rabies is a known virus, we have you know post-exposure, prophylaxis, pre- and post-exposure. Uh, we know how to deal with this. But if it's a novel virus, the last time we had a novel zoonotic virus come in, that was COVID, right? Because we don't know how to deal with this. You know, we have to rapidly understand this bug and develop um antidotes for it and so on and so forth. Uh, and and that is a risk that we do not want to take, and which is also why I come here calling to the global community, because this, given all these conditions, these constellations, you know, everything that has come together, we are putting not only public health of Indians at risk, but public health of the world at risk by doing this.
SPEAKER_01:So so let's dive deeper into that. Let's let's continue with the issues. And then we're gonna get into the behavior issues that we see in the welfare concerns, but let's kind of talk more about the rabies you're talking about, herd immunity, the vacuum effect. A lot of a lot of different ways we can go with that. But uh let's talk about that first, actually, the vacuum effect, what that is and and why that happens when when there's this proposed plan, something like this.
SPEAKER_00:Sure. So every ecosystem has the ability to support a certain amount of life, and that's the nature of an ecosystem. And if you suddenly remove uh a bunch of living beings from that ecosystem, you create a vacuum effect there. And immediately, and this is the beauty of life, I suppose, is immediately life moves in to occupy that space. Now, what kind of life moves into occupy that space? There are three things that we're really concerned about. One is immediately we see an increase of scavengers. So scavengers, comp competing scavengers would be, for instance, rats or mongooses, snakes, so on and so forth. And they're going to come in. And now you can't really be catching rats and vaccinating them and creating herd immunity amongst them. I mean, you guys know the struggles you've had in New York with with rats, right? It's it's not funny at all. This is it's a nightmare. And and this is in a country like the US. In a country like India, where we have such a severe garbage problem and we don't know how to deal with this, this is going to turn into a nightmare very quickly. Or for that matter, snakes. We have a lot of venomous snakes in this country, and snake bite is one of the one of the big concerns of this country. Um so uh and rats, uh dogs can't come up to the 13th floor and you know enter your house, but rats can climb up the drain and come straight up, right? And so they can bring these diseases straight to us. And again, I warn and remind everyone that the last pandemic we had came from a rodent. It they were bats, bats are also rodents, right? So rodents carry zoonotic diseases, they are mammals, they carry diseases that they can transmit to us. Uh, rats carry leptospirosis and plague, and we have had outbreaks of plague in the past in India where they've had mass culling of dogs. Um, and uh and so that is the immediate risk that we put our population under, and that's a health risk. The second risk that we have is India is also an extremely biodiverse country, and so we have a lot of other animals as well, like for instance, Bangalore City has seen panthers. Uh uh in other parts of the country, there have been uh langurs and and bears and even uh tigers. I mean, I was visiting my friend in the Neil Giris, and she she points at the golf course and she says, you know, they don't talk about a dog menace anymore, but they talk about monkey menace, bear menace, panther menace, and then she points at a golf course and she says, In this golf course we have a tiger menace. I mean, come on, right? So when we talk about human-animal conflict and if you're not able to deal with dogs, best of luck dealing with tigers. As everyday citizens, we don't have the wherewithal to deal with these things. We don't know how to deal with it. So when I ask her, what do you guys do? You know, she she talks about this with such dismay because people don't know what to do about these things. And we don't uh in in India it's not legal to shoot these animals and carry arms and shoot them. So, what exactly are you going to do? And with wildlife, again, we risk zoonotic diseases and novel diseases because our two our species have not been in contact with each other. They're not meant to be in such close proximity. So not only do they bring in diseases to us that we have not had exposure to in the past, we don't know what you know what exists out there. But the reverse is true as well. We are giving them diseases through our livestock and our garbage. Uh, and I think uh for instance Robert Sapolski uh documents baboons having died after exposure to human garbage because animals, uh wild animals, when they come in contact with human beings, they very quickly discover sugar. That's the problem, right? And as soon as you discover sugar, sugar is it's it's it's it's a whole other thing. So they get quite addicted to our garbage and they're back there very regularly. It's easy prey for them and they get exposed to diseases that they should not be exposed to. And then finally, uh eventually the dogs come back. Uh, they reproduce, and that's that's what you mentioned. So cases in Russia and things like that show us that this is again the beauty of nature. When you put a population under pressure, they compensate for it by reproducing faster, litercizers can get bigger, and so their numbers are increased, and they come back usually in twice the number that was what we had earlier. So we would have uh stabilized the population with birth control and uh made the population healthy with uh rabies vaccine and got 70% herd immunity. Now that is the number, that is the golden number for us, because that's the number at which we kind of can uh stop the spread of these diseases and stop it from becoming an epidemic within the population. So it takes a lot to stabilize the population, sterilize all of the Them, vaccinate, keep track of it, and get them up to 70%. Now, if you remove that and then a new population comes in, they are non-sterilized, they're non-vaccinated, they not only bring disease risk with them, especially for the context of this podcast. What's also significant is they bring with them bite risk. Bite risk and human-animal conflict risk goes up significantly because now here you have a new set of dogs completely dysregulated because they're in new territory. They're trying to figure out how to work with the other dogs that exist there, which is often a lot of friction. They're trying to understand the people around there, they've not gotten to know them, so there's again a lot of friction. They have also witnessed this is a next generation that has witnessed the previous generation being treated very poorly by human beings. So they come in with a high degree of wariness, they come in with a lot of fear, and we know that fear leads to bites. So there is conflict between them, which then spills over to conflict with human beings. And that is the reason why we did not see bites and rabies decrease in India as long as we were removing them. And it's only in the last two decades when we started stabilizing them, keeping them there, making them healthier, did we see more than a 70% drop in rabies and more than a 50% drop in dog bites? And that's because of the slow work that we have done with um sort of calming them.
SPEAKER_01:Yes. I want to definitely dive deeper into that. I just wanted to back up for a second a clarification question for some of the listeners that may not know. So the uh when we're talking about the problem with rats, and if you remove a good percentage of the dogs, the rat population increases, sometimes explodes. What are the reasons for that? Is it competition because there's less resources available, or is it more the the dogs controlling the rat population? Or can you speak a little bit more about that?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, so it's a two-pronged thing, really. Uh with dog so so big part of the problem in India is that we do not have uh a system for garbage clearance. And so uh we are struggling with garbage, there's garbage everywhere. Now, that is what creates what is called the holding capacity of the ecosystem, the ability to support life is in urban spaces is coming from our garbage. Um and and dogs have always thrived in that space, kind of, you know, dogs have been historically uh scavengers and they evolved to take care of that aspect of human life. Now, they not only clear the garbage and thus they're kind of creating competition for the rats um by by consuming uh the food that is available, but they also tend to uh hunt them and kind of uh uh thus keep the population in check. So with dogs gone, uh that's there's no more competition, no more predator, and and lots and lots of food available.
SPEAKER_01:Okay, makes sense. And so now let's get into uh the the behavior aspect, right? So you know it's something obviously very important to me and many of the listeners to the show thinking about how aggression manifests and how it develops. And you mentioned an increase in aggression when we silly see these efforts or these sort of initiatives put into place and and the problems with it. So let's let's kind of just take a step back and look at the you know, free roaming dogs or streeties and their social structure and the stability of that and sort of the groups they form um loosely. Let's start with that, and then we'll get into what can happen when we disrupt that and all the other things we were just talking about. So start with that.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. So so this is uh uh it's actually a very interesting conversation for uh especially professionals all over the world, uh, because typically I think people look at dog aggression and think of dealing with it by training them. And uh here is a scenario where we're looking at, you know, 60 million dogs, they're free-living dogs, there's no training that's gonna be possible. You know, you go to a streetie and say, hey, if you behave the way, let's say that you want to do positive reinforcement training and you say, you behave the way I'd like you to, then I'm gonna give you a treat. The dog is gonna say, if you're not gonna give me the treat, I'm gonna go dig in the garbage. I don't need to wait around for you to reward me. I don't need rewards from you. I'm I have a free life. So training is really out of the picture with them. And so, how do we how how do we manage bites? How does conflict resolution really happen? I think understanding that is critical. And so, big part of that is understanding the natural history of these dogs. Dogs are very unique creatures in that they evolved to coexist with us, they evolved to understand us really well. Um there was a very interesting uh convening that I was part of where there was a human doctor there uh talking about dog bites, and he said, and he he wasn't really a dog person, he didn't even like dogs, but he said, you know, the worst bites that I see are from pet dogs, and we have data to show this as well. The worst bites in terms of numbers and in terms of severity is from pet dogs, it's not from street dogs. And his assessment of it was very interesting, it was so bang on without any understanding of dog behavior. He said, a street dog at most will jump on you but will maybe scratch you but run away. Uh and they have that option, agency, right? They have the option to run away, whereas pet dogs don't have that option, they are stuck, they are stuck in the four between you know within the four walls of your house, and that's why this escalates. So I think there are lots of lessons to learn there in terms of the role of agency and freedom and the option to walk away when it comes to dogs that feel the need to escalate to a bite. But for free-living dogs, the other thing is we have shaped them, right? Uh, if they start biting, we have very low tolerance for them. So we as a species we get rid of any animal that causes any kind of inconvenience to us. So they have learnt over tens of thousands of years that the way to exist and survive is to have no conflict with this particular species. Instead, we collaborate with this particular species, that's how we survive. And so they have all these uh ways in which they have evolved to look cute to us, to look endearing to us. Um, for instance, if you take um uh the way they feed themselves, people think that dogs are predators, they're not, they are scavengers and they are beggars, and they don't um they they know how to beg for food and they're so effective at that, which we all know, we have seen that. We've seen the dogs next to our dining tables, and just somehow managing to convince even the best of us, you want to give me that food, you really want to give me that food. And if you look at the social structure, it's a very interesting one that you bring up. I was talking to uh one of the scientists here, and I said, you know, canids are pack animals, and she said, not all canids are pack animals, and dogs are very unique in that while wolves form very stable packs, dogs on the other hand form very loose groups, uh, they're very fluid groups. And so dogs, for instance, uh when they go looking for food, uh, wolves will go as a pack to look for their food because they hunt together. Whereas dogs, when they go looking for food, they go in small numbers, maybe one or two of them at most, because uh a single dog approaching a person who is uh near an eatery, a bakery, or an abattoir, and a single dog that approaches with big eyes that says, I'm so cute, and puts his ears out is uh can convince this person to give them food. Whereas a pack of dogs approaching can really make them afraid and really have the opposite effect. So their social structure is an interesting one in that when they look for food, they tend to do it just one or two dogs at a time. When they're scavenging as well, they do it one or two dogs at a time, but when they're sleeping, they can sleep together in larger groups because there's safety in numbers, and one or the other dog can stay up and be uh as you know be on the lookout and alert them uh if there's a problem. So sleeping usually tends to happen with multiple dogs sleeping in proximity, not necessarily all huddled together, so they're not like a tight-knit group. It's a bit more loose, and there is uh they're in small groups uh slightly away from each other, but within earshot of each other, so they can alert each other. Um and and so that's the and they even they're highly, highly social in that they they make friends with groups maybe one or two streets away. My dogs here have have I I I make fun that she has two boyfriends uh down, you know, to the southwest, and then one boyfriend to the east here, and then she goes and you know spends time with them one day with this boyfriend, one day with that boyfriend. Um, and that's just that's just me having fun. But but they and these are these dogs are almost like 500 meters away, one is I think almost a kilometer away, and they come to visit them. Uh this evening we had two of them coming and visiting my dogs. They come and visit them, they have, they spend time with each other and they go back. And as social beings, we also need to understand that this way of having freedom of movement and engaging with each other in play, in jest, also plays a huge role in emotional regulation. So if they have been dysregulated because of something else, being in the company of other other conspecifics to help them co-regulate, helps them calm themselves down and uh go back to sleep and uh and pump in some of those good hormones in them. Um and so that's that's the complex web that they have created for themselves. That is the social complexity that they have and that that's going on for them.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, I think the takeaway there is that dogs are, of course, highly adaptive to the environment. And that works for them many times, but it I I think we can say it works against them when we take them out of an environment that they've grown accustomed to or they've gotten used to, and we changed that dramatically because now they have to adapt to that new, more harsh environment. And what what I was thinking of here is culturally or where depending on where you are in the world and how most of the dogs are treated by, let's just say, the general public, so people walking around in the street, it's gonna it's gonna impact their behavior quite a bit. And and I think of, you know, if you travel around and you travel to different countries, you go to more touristy areas, the dogs are, you know, the free-living dogs, they're very smart about working the tourists. They know how to like say give those big eyes, like you mentioned. And and the the chances of aggression or seeing the aggression, I should say, the the in my observations, even at very low levels that most people wouldn't notice, whether it's a certain signal that they say, I need a little distance here. It it's with such less frequency, I see it, versus some other places where maybe the dogs are looked on as uh sort of more of a nuisance in some countries, or there's they're not uh viewed as the same type of sentient being as they are in some other countries. And so that it really does argue the point that, okay, if we take these dogs and put them in a harsher environment, meaning confinement, lack of agency, lack of choices, stressful change, and in especially uh we're gonna assume more competition over resources because they don't get to just go scavenge whatever they want for the day, you're going to see significant, profound changes, and that's gonna get and end up getting passed on. And we'll talk about how that happens too in just a moment. But you know, you know, really makes you take a step back and say, why would we do that? Why would we put these dogs in a new environment where they have to adapt but in a negative way, right? It it just it speaks, it's so counterintuitive when you really think about it, you know.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, absolutely. And and I it's it's it's a new environment, but it's also a very disorienting environment because they're social beings. So they ground themselves with what's familiar around them. They are territorial beings. It's much like us. You know, if you just transplant a person from place A to place B without free will, just remove them and toss them in a completely new environment. I mean, those of us who have moved to a new country, for instance, have experienced this, right? It is just so disorienting. Uh and so that also causes a lot of dysregulation and confusion. Uh, and that in itself can can really increase uh uh conflict risk. But on top of that, if there is added competition, they haven't figured out what their food sources are from, that further stresses them out. And uh because they're territorial, if you put them, you know, that's the other thing that I see. Even people with pet dogs make this mistake, right? Of you take a dog into a dog park with completely new dogs and then expect that somehow they're just gonna get along with all of them. Uh, that's not the way social beings work. They need time. There are processes, there is kind of a social protocol that is followed for them to get to know each other, meet and greet each other, and um understand the roles that different uh individuals play in their life and and navigate that social space and and figure out where do I belong in this social fabric and how do I navigate the social fabric? You know, which dog do I not approach? Which what which are the buttons of this dog that I do not press? This dog is sensitive around this, and you know, I'm not going to I'm not gonna press the button. So that takes a some certain amount of learning and time, and not giving space for that, I think, can lead to lead to miscommunication, which translates to growling, and we see all of that as one bucket, right? Just regression, but that's not it, it's not as simple as that. And I think um uh uh it's it's just not fair to not see that social complexity with with these animals while we seem to completely create room for that for ourselves. We understand that with ourselves, but that's their struggle too.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, I it's something it's an analogy I try to remind people of all the time when they're looking at, you know, quote unquote rescuing dogs from another country and bringing them into another place that they think is going to be much better environment for them. But sometimes it's much worse because of the restrictions that society places on dogs. And you have to think about these dogs that are if they're getting round up and put into these mass shelters, just how much stress that is. But we don't a lot of people don't realize you know what that feels like, or or they don't think about what that might feel like for the dogs when they could just put themselves in that shoes and they can easily, most people can easily recognize whoa, this is like somebody just scoops me up and puts me somewhere foreign with a bunch of people I don't know, and I don't know what kind of where my next meal is gonna come from or what's gonna happen day to day. And then and we're talking about the dogs that are that have been routed up, right? So we'll talk about the dogs that didn't, you know, that that witnessed all of this in just a moment. But you know, you think about the dogs that are in those shelters, the accumulative stress or the distress, and then how that not not only impacts their behavior, but their health, right? So we know the chronic issues with distress or chronic stress, how that impacts their health and their immunity. And again, when they're talking about, you know, the issue of uh of you know diseases and and pandemics, and then you you add in these layers that make it potentially more likely, right? So for these health issues to occur. And these so you know, there's just so many things. And that's just the talks that we've we've they were able to capture, right?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, yeah. And and the and this is the thing, right? So their idea seems to be, especially in the court in India, their idea seems to be we'll put them in shelters and get them adopted. But what they don't seem to see is exactly what you're pointing out. Once you remove them from where they're at and you move them into shelters, the environment that you put them in is so distressing and so stressful that these dogs can become can get completely dysregulated and they can turn into biting dogs in quote unquote. But it's not really, we know that that's not what it is. They're dogs that are struggling to cope with what we have done to them. And so nobody really wants to adopt them at this point anymore because they are biting dogs. Who wants to take them home? And even if they do, we don't have the necessary education to explain this is what has happened, this is this is the kind of space that they need, this is the time that they need to recuperate. So here's a dog that has gotten picked up from the road, put in put in a uh in a horrible environment, moved to a home by somebody who thinks that they're uh this dog's knight in shining armor, right? So they come and say, Okay, you know, I'd like to do this thing for this dog, I'd like to pick up the dog and take the dog home. And now they're feeling extremely offended by this because this dog has turned around and started biting the rescuer, right? Uh, whoever has rescued this dog. And so they take it very personally, they get very upset with it, and then what happens? We all know what happens to dogs like this. This there's no happy ending here at all. And it's not just the dog, right? The price that is often paid is by the most vulnerable. So the ones that are going to likely get bitten are the children in the house. And so uh here is a decision that has been taken by three people sitting at the highest court of the country, and the ones who are paying the price are the most vulnerable of a society, our children and our animals. It's just heartbreaking.
SPEAKER_01:Yes, yeah. And and I'm assuming the statistics are similar there in the the the demographic or the age of people, humans that get bitten the most, five to nine-year-old boys in the US, anyways, but uh I'm sure it's similar there. And that that also needs to be considered as a consideration for safety for our children and our seniors, right? They're the second most bitten demographic. So and that's born out of a lot of times the environment that we subject the dogs to. So we talked about the cap that the dogs that work or potentially could be captured, but then you have the dogs that are not, or the dogs sort of, I don't want to say left behind, but the dogs that didn't get into the hands of the folks trying to round them up. Oftentimes you're gonna see dogs that are proficient escape artists, so they're gonna be more like, okay, because let's face it, dogs learn through many, many different ways, but they're also uh good observational learners, right? So they see something, they see another dog getting around. They're like, whoa, I'm not gonna let that happen to me. I saw what happened there, so I'm gonna do my best to avoid the next person that looks like this in their uniform or whatever. And so you now you over time you're selecting for the dogs that are better skateboards, that probably are more fearful, right? Or they're they're able to use behaviors to get themselves out of that situation. So basically, what can happen over the long run is you're selecting for these dogs that are the ones we would want to maybe not have as prevalent. The whole issue in the first place is biting risk, right? So you're actually creating more potential biters by the dogs operating. Observing this, like this is how I get myself out of the situation. That's just one of the many reasons, right? So talk on that, and then we'll get into like things like in utero and then um other other types of learning that can happen. But let's just talk about that one thing first, like just the observational aspect.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. And they dogs are excellent learners, highly adaptable, like you mentioned, and they are social learners. So they uh benefit a lot from observing other members of their society and learning from them. And so if they are observing this species, uh that is the human species, turning violent against their own kind, uh against I mean the dog kind, they will learn to be wary of us. And where there is fear, there is conflict. And this is true in both directions, right? Humans fear dogs, and that's why there is violence towards dogs, and dogs start fearing humans, and that's why there is going to be conflict with humans and bite risk. Um add to that, uh, these are, like you said, the ones that um don't get captured are like the this is this is we see this report all the time. The dogs that are getting captured in in the last few months that we're seeing are all the friendly ones, the friendliest, nicest ones, the ones who look at humans and come running towards them to say, hi. And those are the ones that are getting captured. Those are the ones we want to keep with us. Exactly. Because also one of the things that we also know is that dogs are territorial animals. And that's also why we talk about ABC is when we do birth control and we stabilize the population. So in my neighborhood, the dogs that are in here are the ones that keep new dogs out. So they keep this area consistent, the population of this area consistent. I don't have to do additional work towards that. And the healthier I get that get them to be, the friendlier I get them to be, the more likely they're going to keep this population very stable. Those are the dogs that you're removing, and and the the ones that remain back are the ones who are absolutely terrified, are completely wary of humans to start with, and self-fulfilling prophecy. I was afraid of humans, and humans proved me right. They are terrible, and um, this is really a recipe for disaster.
SPEAKER_01:Yes. And then those dogs start having puppies, right? Because they've got to feel that ecological need of the population. And uh so in utero, stress, and then that's been researched as well and studied, is what can be passed down to the puppies. So you want to just talk briefly on that?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, absolutely. I think there are multiple studies that talk about this. Uh, there is um epigenetics that comes into play, uh, there is uh maternal fear and stress that comes into play. And so I I think there have been studies that have been done on uh rats which show that if you induce, for instance, a fear of a certain odor in the mother, uh the the babies that are born have the same fear, you know, of of an odor of a synthetic odor, right? Like if an synthetic odor can get passed down like that, there's a lot more that can get passed down. And so you're creating a whole new population, you're shaping the population now. It's not about individual dogs anymore, you're shaping entire populations to be fearful. Um, yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, and so we're and and for the for those that may not like uh have that side of aggression, that thought process kind of worked out in terms of the epigenetics and what can happen there, is that you're pri in a sense, you're priming these dogs to be more likely to be defensive because that is what they need to do to survive, what they're primed to do to survive through either learning or through epigenetics or combination of through the environment. And you think about you know, you see dogs in some countries, for instance, they uh the average public will throw stones at them because they were, you know, they look at dogs, you know, as like vermin or or not. Uh the the culture of liking dogs is not very high in some of those countries. So you see the dogs start to take on this defensive through, again, observation. I'm sure it's passed down through generations, and you get you're what what happens is you develop this population of dogs that it's you're gonna more likely see a bite because yeah, I tell people all the time, you know, aggression is normal, it's just normal aspect of all species when it comes to defense and keeping ourselves safe and alive. So if we want to see more bites, just threaten the dogs more in any way we try to as humans or stumble into as humans, right? So um, yeah.
SPEAKER_00:It's it's remarkable, right? Uh we seem to, as a as a species, we seem to understand, we seem to justify our aggression. When somebody comes at us, we are allowed to defend ourselves in court to say, hey, this aggression was part of self-defense. We understand that very well, that we can make an argument in court saying this is this aggression was was a result of self-defense. But when it comes to animals, we are almost taken by complete surprise and shock when we see the same thing from them. And uh we don't seem to understand that when you threaten an animal, the animal will try to defend themselves, and that does not look like a signed petition that is going to have teeth and snarling and fangs and and claws involved. That is all they have going for themselves. Uh, but uh it seems like we take it very personally to say, no, this seems to be an offensive action against me without recognizing that this is a defensive action by the animal.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, yeah. It's you know, it makes you think of that saying uh a dog is a man's best friend, but then you think about it it's that there's no worse enemy for some dogs than the modern man. Yeah. And it's just you know, the biases that that you know many humans have and the misconceptions and all these myths and everything really surrounding this issue, so much of it is, you know, the resulting uh what's happening as a result is just speaks just such loud volumes about you know the the problem we can cause as humans for other animals. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Absolutely. So we have been doing a lot of work with on-ground communities where we I and I'm not gonna dismiss the fact that there are dogs that bite um uh humans who have not necessarily threatened them. So that does happen. It's rare, uh, but it does happen, and we have to take cognizance of it. And we've been doing a lot of on-ground work with entering these communities to figure out what's going on and how do we resolve it. And and it gets very interesting, right? Because we don't have the option of training them. So, what is it that we can do? And we find that um understanding dog behavior and just modifying the environment a little bit can do great wonders. For instance, this is something that was a very simple thing that uh the uh one of the premier institutes in India has a very nice place called the dog lab in Kolkata, where they study free living dogs exclusively free living dogs, and they have multiple doctorate students coming out of there with this expertise. And I was talking to the scientist there, uh the head of the lab there, and she said, you know, we have done the mapping of the dogs, and we realize that dogs rest close to where they eat. And so if you move the feeding points away from busy areas, a lot of the bites are a result of a startled response. So, you know, it's important that we do not go too close to an eating dog or a sleeping dog. And so if we move their feeding areas to uh quieter areas, you know, sort of cul-de-sacks, end of the uh road or an open park, uh or you move you make sure that it's not in a narrow alleyway, a staircase, a landing, and things like that. You move the feeding areas, their resting areas automatically move. Uh, and that in itself gives us ex extraordinary uh success. You know, like we manage to get rid of 80% of the bites by simply moving the feeding area. Another one that we do is um break up the group and feed them in multiple places, like you said, decrease the perception of competition because they're simple animals. You know, sometimes they perceive competition where there may be none. So two if you feed too many dogs in the same area, it might be difficult. So break up the groups, uh feed them separately in different areas. And then another one, a very simple one that we do is give them warm beds to sleep. You know, a dog that is able to sleep is going to get enough sleep. A dog that is sleep deprived is again a dog that is likely to bite. So make sure they're getting enough sleep. Dogs need 14 to 16 hours of sleep a day. That's the beauty of the dog. That's the other study that uh Dr. Badra's lab did when they did uh an ethological study to see the breakdown of their activity budget, time activity budget, is that most dogs want to sleep most of the day. That's really all they want to do. Uh, you know, the Coppingers, Dr. Coppinger has written a great book on the dogs, right? And he says wolves evolved to travel great distances to look for foods, while dogs evolved to stay in one place and wait for the garbage and the food to arrive, right? And that's what they do well. They just want to sleep for 10 hours and wait for you to get done with your meal and then throw out what's remaining, and we will eat it and we'll go back to sleep. And if we understand that and we can enable that, it makes such a big difference. You know, 90% of the bites, 95% of the bites, we can just broad strokes, we can get rid of them, and then really look at the few anomalies that they have. There will always be anomalies and see if those dogs really need to be removed, rehomed, whether they don't do well on the streets, maybe they are really meant to be in a more uh caring environment, and so they really need to be moved into a home, you know, in the presence of experts, maybe. But that number really drops down to something that is very, very manageable then. Uh and so understanding dog behavior is so critical in in a situation like this, understanding uh their ethograms and ethology.
SPEAKER_01:I I think uh in that with that in mind, also for me, that the understanding that dog bites are so infrequent and happens so much less than other types of common injuries, it's again the hysteria and the misconceptions and the biases that people have because it's a I guess a creature with teeth, right? And so people have these perceptions, but you know, you don't see mass hysteria like in the US about balloons or slippers or five-gallon buckets, right? Or swimming pools, you know, things that cause far more injuries statistically to children and to adults in many cases than dog bites. Far, far more. And uh but pe you know, you never hear about like, oh, we've gotta ban balloons. We can never have balloons anymore. You've got to throw those all away and ground them all up and get rid of them all, right? Or swimming pools. We can we can't have people swimming anymore because they might drown or this bad things can happen. It's just, you know, when you think about so so for me, and kind of segueing off that, for me, it's it's about education, right? You teach kids, you know, hey, when you're blowing up a balloon, be careful, or you know, don't you know you're walking down the stairs, don't wear loose slippers, right? You learn how to swim, you take precautions. And so I find, again, traveling around, you see the public's interaction with dogs in some places. Like in the US, I will say it's there's a lack of education how about how to interact with dogs. People like you know, you hear it all the time, kids running up, or even adults running up to dogs, like, oh, I love dogs, and then petting dogs that they don't know. Whereas some places you go, there's a profound respect, right? You so the dogs could be sleeping right on the sidewalk. And then people and the kids, they know they've been brought up just let sleeping dogs lie, they walk around, or they even just step over the dog that's sleeping on the sidewalk. And the dogs all know that, hey, nobody's gonna bother me because the vast majority of people don't try to reach down and pet me while I'm sleeping. So, in that with that in mind, don't you think it would be in terms of the resources spent on these kind of issues, is it should go towards the education, right? Educating the public, uh and of course all the other things you mentioned to put in place, relocation of certain things and and and setting the environment for success, right? Yeah, but yeah, you know, in terms of the educational component, uh you see profound differences depending on where you are in the world and how people interact with dogs. Do you want to talk about that a little bit?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, absolutely. I think education is so critical and it's it's such low-hanging fruit because it's not complicated education here. I've been in the last few months, I've also been doing a lot of college programs. Um and um the the lessons are not that hard. I and and India, I mean this this is what breaks my heart, right? India has been a country where many of us have known historically, ancestrally, we have learned how to deal with animals, and that knowledge is slowly getting lost in urban India, which is I think part of the problem why we are here, because I live in a rural area, and the other day I was out uh in a in a little shop close by, and the lady there, there's a little dog that came up. It's it's a little tuck shop, you know. This she sells uh some cookies and you know some vegetables and whatnot. Uh, and so as soon as I went there, the dog came up there uh to me and I said hi and I tried to pet the dog and she's like, No, no, no, don't pet the dog. That's a straight dog, it'll bite. Now, uh clearly she has very little understanding of dog behavior, she has very little affection for them, uh, but uh she knows how to keep herself safe, which is she's not panicking about this dog. This dog obviously has made it a habit to show up at that shop every time there are people there to buy something, but she has learned that okay, the way to keep myself safe is just don't touch the animal. So basics go like this: if you don't know how to deal with them, if you are not unsure how to deal with them, just don't touch them. And we talk about curving, which is you know, walk in a wide curve around them with your shoulders slightly turned away from them, sort of avoiding them. So if there's a dog on the right side of the road, you cross over to the left side of the road and you walk away from them. Uh, talking about basics about don't approach an eating animal, sleeping animal, injured animal, or a lactating mother. These are golden rules. My grandfather was a farmer, and you know, we would be allowed to go run on the farm, and in India, we're gonna have snakes and peacocks and mongooses and whatnot. And we were not protected from all of that. And we were just told, okay, kids, you can go play, but just don't do this. Don't poke, prod. And if there's an animal that's sleeping, eating with babies or injured, they are high bite risk, high conflict risk. So don't go near them, don't approach them. And then the other last aspect of it is if an animal comes charging at you, you know, stay very, very still. Don't make extreme eye contact, you know, be a tree, right? Like don't avoid eye contact, tuck in your limbs, protect your neck, and be very still. That's it. That's all there is to it, right? That is the bulk of the lesson there. We can make posters of this and stick it on every school, every hospital at a fraction of the budget that they're talking about, and we would reduce bites by a huge degree, but that is the sensible thing to do, and it seems like we live in a climate where sensible things are generally disregarded.
SPEAKER_01:You think? Uh-huh. Yeah, I'm I'm only like half joking, but we need to like bring back shaming for people that get bitten, in the sense that, you know, you see like these videos, somebody in Yellowstone Park, they approach a bison and they get, you know, knocked out or they get hurt by a bison or a bear or something. And everybody in the comments usually jumps to what was that person thinking? What an idiot, you know, they should have never gone up to and that's normal, people see that. But when you think about it, why don't we just do the same with dogs? Like, why are you going up to that sleeping dog and trying to pet it or or do something to it? Well, it's you know, it's the same kind of concept, but like you're going up to an animal that could potentially harm you if it's not interested in you, just like the bison or the bear. And it's just like, well, you know, going up to a dog that and you got bitten should be considered sometimes. It's the humans, you know, shouldn't be doing what they're doing. But I digress.
SPEAKER_00:Um Yeah, and and with dogs, right? It's really interesting, is that unlike most animals, they have a very high tolerance for proximity. So unlike most other animals where you you cannot dream of being in the same space with them, dogs tolerate so much. I've seen people hug them and and and literally like stick their fingers in their ears and whatnot, like things you should not be doing with any living being. You try that with your friend, and your friend is going to snap at you and not want to be a friend anymore. But they do all kinds of things and they have such a high degree of tolerance for this. And if we don't, and there's a reason they have this high degree of tolerance is that they want to coexist around us and they play a very critical role in our ecosystem. This is something we shouldn't forget. And so they are really a gift to humankind because they are tolerating our nonsense while still protecting us and saving us and cleaning our environment and keeping it safe. And keep and they're they're alerters, they alert us from uh other animals, other intruders, you know, people who shouldn't be in the neighborhood, so on and so forth. They're protectors. So one of the submissions that was done in court was a very um moving submission. This this judge, I mean, this lawyer has done years of work and has written a book about orphaned children on the roads of India, which is just uh a really difficult topic to talk about. And uh she talks about how dogs are their only line of defense. These free-living dogs, they're the only line of defense. She's like, don't take that away from them. They have nothing going for them. They live on the streets by themselves. And you'll see the same of many, many women who come out and say that you know India is not a safe place for women. We're not very proud of, you know, the kind of country we are, especially towards women. And many of us, and I speak for myself too, feel safer on the streets at night because these dogs exist. They are a gift to us and they tolerate us and they still give to us. And despite all this, we seem to not want to see this. It's we're a remarkable species.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, yeah. So uh on this note, of what we kind of been talking about, you know, what humans can do, but what can can we do? And the professionals maybe listen to this podcast as well. What can be done uh to help with this issue and to to really steer things back in the right direction here?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, okay. So this is a this is a constantly evolving situation. Since August, we have been this is you know, there's new things being thrown at us all the time. So depending on when you hear this, the situation may have changed. So the first and most critical thing is exactly what you're doing, what your listeners are doing, which is start paying attention to this. Don't look away, don't ignore it as something that's happening in another part of the world. Just the fact that you're informed and you're staying on top of this, you're aware of how this scene is unfolding, I think is one of the biggest and most critical. And important things. I tell everybody: don't take your eyes off us. We are fighting this, we are fighting this on for many reasons. There's also a meta fight here, right? Which is that of privilege and things like that. So don't take your eyes off us. Many of us are writing about this. My own school, we have blogs, we, you know, we are on social media and we're we have put most of our other marketing aside. And you know, this is what we've been focusing on. So please follow us and stay on top of what we what we are trying to say and read the articles, you know, go through the whole thing. Don't just skim over it. The devil is in the details, really, here. Uh, and our ask also keeps changing based on how the situation is unraveling. So you'll understand more of it, and maybe you will find something that you can help with at that moment that you can give to us. Uh, so that is going to continue, it has been critical for us right from the beginning, and it will continue to remain critical. Uh, and I think this is true for any cause that that touches your heart. I think you have to stay on top of it, right? And stick with it, right? Don't abandon the cause, stick with it. It's happening in another part of the world that you don't understand, so it's easy to forget and get caught, but stick with it. We will stick with you, you stick with us, kind of a thing. Um, the second thing is you are loud voices within your own countries, especially professionals. So you are you can lend your voice to escalate this to organizations, animal welfare organizations within your own country to put out statements uh condemning uh what the court is doing, condemning not just the animal abuse, but also the um public health crisis that they are creating. Um organizations that speak up make a very big difference. Uh, so any any statements that they put out uh will make a big difference to us, and you can either tag our school so we can amplify it, or tag the Supreme Court directly, tag the government of India directly. Uh that will make a huge difference to us. Um you can also reach out to um uh professional organizations, um, sort of for for you know dog professionals to see. We have got a few already, especially from the UK. Uh, we have got a few who have put out statements supporting us. So any statement of that kind. Uh, you know, me reaching out to a lot of these organizations, I'm just somebody from India, they're not going to pay attention, but when you reach out, it makes such a big difference. So that is something that will really help us. Um, and then lastly, just you know, just reaching out to us every once in a while, those of us who are fighting and feel like we're fighting a losing battle completely, reaching out to us to tell us, you know, you've got this, keep going. I think that also makes a difference, you know.
SPEAKER_01:Yes, yes. Well, yeah, certainly I can't speak for everybody in the bitey end of the dog audience, but I am sure you have lots of support from the listeners that are listening right now. And um, I implore everybody who is listening to go out and share this information and and and talk about this situation because you know Centaur has just touched upon the so many issues, uh, the so many uh the impacts on not only dogs but humans um in India and beyond, because we were talking earlier about how this could become almost contagious uh thinking, and which is of course damaging in so many ways. So um, Centaur, any other last thoughts you want to put out to the world?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, so uh in response to what the court has done, while the court is still deliberating on this, people have started taking matters into their own hands, which is leading to very, very gruesome stuff, right? And I don't want to get into too many details because I know we all have sensitive hearts, and I I really don't want to upset uh your day, but uh the kind of ways uh in my neighboring state alone, thousand dogs in the last two weeks have been killed in brutal ways, including burying and burning them alive. And so this is really a very urgent matter for us. Um, and that's why I'm here, that's why Mike, I requested you that you know I want to talk to your audience, and and I've sort of putting myself out there talking to anybody who will, um, because while we argue and talk about the science of it and talk about the finance of it and the legality of it and so on and so forth, I think dogs are losing their lives in the most horrific manner, and uh I think that there's a sense of urgency because of that, and that's really what I'm reaching out for. And I also want to express that you know, for us who are on ground and witnessing this, this is so difficult that despite it being very much our battle, some days I wake up and I just want to be like, I don't want to think about this today. But I so I can understand if you know people outside the country don't want to think about it because I do recognize that all of you are fighting your own battles in your own countries, which is equally disturbing and and really gotten all of us shook up. So, given that the fact that you've stuck around till the end, listen to this, I think I have this overwhelming sense of gratitude in my heart for what you have given me. It means so much to me. And so I really want to say thank you, and um I want to give you all a big virtual hug.
SPEAKER_01:Well, we thank you, Santor. Absolutely. Not only in this regard, but all the work you've done uh for dogs and humanity. So um, anything we can do to support, of course. And uh one last quick question is the where to send people. So it's your site and and you know you mentioned tagging on social media, but uh is there any central website for for more information that you want to send people to, or should I send them to Barks or Yeah?
SPEAKER_00:So our website, www.barks.com, uh, we we do have a tab there with details on removal of dogs. Uh, but our social media has more of it. Uh we are on uh we've now recently got on X as well because apparently that's where you need to talk about this. But we're more active, tend to be more active on Facebook and uh uh and Instagram. And I do have a blog as well, it's called blog.bucks.com, uh, where we've written extensively detailed scientific articles. So all of these are spaces where uh we we also have documented newspaper articles and other institutions that have uh written technical reports, so we have trying to collate all of that and present it.
SPEAKER_01:And that is Barks B-H-A-R-C-S.com. Barks.com. And I'll include those in the show notes for everybody listening in. Cynthia, thank you so much for joining me and thank you for sharing this information with the world. Um, I really appreciate everything you're doing, and um uh we will stay in touch for sure.
SPEAKER_00:Yes, thank you so much for having me here. I I uh it means a lot to know that we are not alone in our part of the world. And um, yeah, I'm just out of words for this. Yeah, I feel so much gratitude. Thank you.
SPEAKER_01:Thank you.