Rescue & Adoption of Stray Dogs in Shelters.

While surfing I came across a site http://www.gratefuldogsrescue.org/

A site for rescue and adoption of dogs who face "euthanasia" (how i hate that word) in shelter homes.

Based in San Francisco, the non-profit organization offers dogs for adoption.

The thing that is really sad is why does anyone need to kill animals in the first place. And it isn't even that these animals are sick.

Perhaps it is the fault of the kind of life-style we lead (or want to lead).

Many friends tell me about how impressed they are by the "cleanliness" they see when they visit abroad. and filth we have here in India. And i agree hundred percent that it is highly unclean here. With heaps of garbage and man and animal living in dire conditions in many quarters of cities in India, we do need a massive cleanup.

I shudder to think of the day though when we will "really" catch up with the West in terms of brandishing strays as outlaws.

I think many people around the world would be surprised to know that Indian people are the worst in the world when it comes to compassion for animals. For our much touted cultural superiority or Gandhian values; we as a people fail miserably when it comes to compassion for animals. Forget strays even pets are mal-treated here.

If we continue down the path of progress which we surely will, i just hope we have enough people out there who dont make dumb animals pay the price for what we think is progress.

Many Indians though blindly adopt all values of the West, which arent all bad. But the way we apply them here is really stark.

Innumerable times there are calls for rounding up dogs in Bombay to avoid spread of rabies and the mass growth in the dog population.

While i agree spread of rabies must be halted and dog population controlled, i havnt once read in any letters to the editors about people who would want to volunteer money or cost of rabies shots (even for strays in their own colony or locality) to the NGOs involved in vaccination and spaying/castration of animals.

Instead they cry fowl that it isnt their responsibility at all and the best solution would be to kill all the animals.

Little does anyone realise that till a few years back dogs were killed in the most horrifying manner.

Tied up in gunny bags that were doused in water and then a live wire was dropped on them! Sometimes dogs in gunny bags were bitten to death!

Very alarming indeed that we say we are progressing, educated, a country full of young people but want to go back to these barbarian ways!

And anyone who claims that this will never happen again is in for a shock, because contrary to the claims of the Municipal Corporation not much money is either allocated or worst allocated funds never reach the NGOs; the Municipal Corporation does indeed find such "low-tech, low cost and barbaric solutions" quite the norm.

Seeing the following page

http://www.gratefuldogsrescue.org/availabledogs.html

I was reminded of all the strays i see around here in India and they shameful way we treat them.

I once read a quote by Gandhi in which he said

"The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated." —Mahatma Gandhi.

In the land of the Mahatma where we have this enshrined in our constitutional Article 51A, which makes it a duty of every citizen of India "(g) to protect and improve the natural environment including forests, lakes, rivers, and wildlife, and to have compassion for living creatures".
we still dont feel obliged to our moral and ethical duties.

Buddhism-Mahavamsa:

If you have men who will exclude any of God's creatures from the shelter of compassion and pity, you will have men who will deal likewise with their fellow men