Japanese strays find it's a dog's life cut short
Source: Agencies |
March 30, 2010, Tuesday
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Print Edition
Print Edition
IT'S a dog's life for a stray mutt in any country, but in Japan a canine that ends up in the municipal pound is far more likely to be put down than to find a new home.
While in some other industrialized countries the idea of "saving" a pet from a shelter is well-established, in Japan animal welfare activists say strays often fall foul of an attitude that prizes puppies and pedigrees as status symbols.
"In Britain, the public go to animal welfare shelters to adopt an animal and save a life. The mindset in Japan is still 'if you want a pet, go to a pet shop'," said Briar Simpson, a New Zealander who works for Japan's animal shelter ARK.
In Britain, approximately 6 to 9 percent of dogs in pounds are put to death every year, 2007-2009 figures show, according to the Website of Dogs Trust, its largest dog charity.
In Japan that figure is more than 70 percent, the Japanese animal welfare organization ALIVE says.
In rural areas such as Tokushima Prefecture, on the southwestern island of Shikoku, the situation is even worse. In 2008 alone, more than 88 percent of abandoned dogs at the Tokushima Animal Welfare Centre were put down.
Most strays have been abandoned by their owners, while others are the offspring of abandoned dogs that have gone wild. Some hunting dogs are dumped in the off-season rather than kept for the following year's season, activists say.
But whatever their former lives, once at the centre the dogs are kept for a maximum of only seven days.
Attitudes are changing slowly due to media coverage in recent years, especially in the cities where the pet boom is at its height.
At the Tokushima Animal Welfare Centre, more than 2,700 dogs were killed in the year to March 2009.
When the centre was built, officials promised locals they would not kill any dogs on site, so they are asphyxiated with carbon dioxide gas in metal containers euphemistically called "dream boxes" aboard a truck traveling between the centre and the crematorium.
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