Baghdad kills over 58,000 stray dogs in 3 months

Baghdad officials said Saturday that 58,000 stray dogs have been killed in and around the Iraqi capital over the past three months as part of a campaign to curb an increasing number of strays blamed for attacks on residents.

A statement released from the Baghdad provincial government said 20 teams, made up of police shooters and veterinarians, had been moving around Baghdad and the outer-lying regions daily looking for and putting down the strays. The operation, which was first announced in 2008, truly took off in April after funds were allocated.

www.theglobeandmail.com...

Wow! Where did all these strays come from?

The surge in strays — estimated by provincial officials to have reached 1.25 million — is ironically linked to what officials say is an improvement in some elements of daily life in Baghdad, a city that for seven years has been struggling to return to normalcy after the 2003 U.S.-led invasion to topple Saddam Hussein.

Officials with the provincial veterinary directorate said the dogs are eating more and having bigger litters.

I guess there are no SPCA's in Iraq...

reply to post by mishigas


I hope these dogs were skinned, refrigerated and shipped to North Korea.

Just saying.......what a waste this could be.

reply to post by kyred


At least send a couple dozen of the breeding pairs over to NK...

but some of the dead ones were killed by poisoning, so maybe those can be sent to Lil Kim...

Muslims don't like dogs, they are considered "dirty" in their culture. They'll keep them around for protection purposes for property but that's about it. They don't keep them as pets as we do.

[edit on 11-7-2010 by bg_socalif]

I guess they missed Bob Baker's memo on having your pet spayed or neutered.

I wonder what breeds the dogs were, or at least the majority. Picture 10,000 shih tzu's running around in the desert. And if they are this many dogs, where do they get their food? These Iraqi people need to stop leaving their left overs where these Dalmatians and Wiener dogs can get them.

reply to post by Str8Jackit


Without a doubt the dogs were mixed breed...mutts. What did they eat? In a war zone, the possibilities are gruesome.

reply to post by Str8Jackit


All the dogs I've seen on TV, pictures, and even pictures that some friends of mine had taken over there all seemed to be a brown short haired German Sheppard looking dog, with a slight resemblance to a dingo lol. I don't think they'd have labradoodles and the likes over there (yet), not quite Westernized .. and I had thought Muslims hated dogs, so I'm surprised there are even dogs over there at all.

Muslims are permitted to use dogs for hunting, guarding etc. They are not allowed to live in the house with them though. This is because they believe they are dirty. Same reason they don't eat pork, it's dirty generally. They are not the only culture with this mindset. My husband has been to Iraq twice and Afghanistan once (and is going again), he says they do keep dogs but just for work and such.

It's unlikely they killed the dogs solely because they dislike dogs. That number isn't even really that high. We kill millions of dogs and cats in pounds in the U.S. every year. You simply cannot have thousands of strays running around, it's a health and safety issue.

Rockpuck:

All the dogs I've seen on TV, pictures, and even pictures that some friends of mine had taken over there all seemed to be a brown short haired German Sheppard looking dog, with a slight resemblance to a dingo lol.

Yeah, the links have several pictures that bear out your observation. I didn't see any Portugese Water Dogs.

Antonia:

Maybe the 58K killed in 3 months isn't large; I don't know, but the number of over a million strays in Baghdad is high, at least to me.

Originally posted by mishigas


Antonia:

Maybe the 58K killed in 3 months isn't large; I don't know, but the number of over a million strays in Baghdad is high, at least to me.

That's actually not too bad. Old numbers for the U.S. pre-recession put the stray dog population at about 2 to 3 million (mostly concentrated in urban areas). It has gone up drastically since the housing bust. We are probably talking 4 to 5 million now. These numbers probably aren't close to reality considering we don't catch most of the dogs. Many shelters don't even keep stats. It also has to be kept in mind that a lot of these dogs are not "strays" in the sense you and I would see them. Most of these dogs are feral. It's a different situation from what we have going on over here. You can't train these dogs, you cannot house them. They are wild animals. The best comparison I can make is to Detroit. Detroit actually does have feral dog packs running around. A feral dog will tear you up.

[edit on 11-7-2010 by antonia]