Chanting to soothe the troubled beast
Print Edition
Pumped out over speakers, Buddhist chants play for packs of stray dogs at a Yangon shelter in an unusual effort to calm them down as Myanmar struggles to control a ballooning canine population and a deadly rabies scourge.
鈥淲e find that the dogs don鈥檛 mate ... when we play Dharma preaching,鈥 says Maung Maung Oo, the local manager of the Thabarwa Animal Shelter.
An estimated 1,000 people die from rabies each year in Myanmar, one of the highest rates in the world and a conservative estimate according to experts.
Stray dogs are the main source of the problem but culling through poison has stirred debate through the Buddhist-majority country.
Some adhere to the belief that neutering will result in karmic retribution that might render the person infertile in the next life.
Vaccination can be expensive and many rescue centers lack the resources to do it.
But the Thabarwa Animal Shelter, located 45 kilometers northeast of Yangon, is home to 2,000 strays and it puts on recorded chanting twice a day to make the dogs 鈥渓ess aggressive,鈥 Maung Maung Oo explains. 鈥淲hat else can we do?鈥
Up to 80 new canines arrive daily, Maung Maung Oo and his 40-strong team, who also take care of monkeys and Asian black bears, have been overwhelmed.
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