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Kandy's dog pound, no more a hell hole

The Kandy Municipal Council dog pound at Gohagoda has been transformed into a haven for its occupants. A group of animal lovers are looking after these dogs with the approval of the Kandy Municipal Council.

These animal lovers are doing a great job in caring for the animals. The very person who was catching dogs a few months ago, has been converted into a humane and caring person. He has taken one of the sterilized dogs from the "dog pound" as his pet dog and most other dogs at this shelter are being taken into homes. How did this happen? What paved the way to this?

The Kandy Association for Community Protection through Animal Welfare (KACPAW) along with the World Society for the Protection of Animals (WSPA) organised a workshop on humane dog catching and handling on September 10 and 11. At this workshop conducted by Brian Faulkner of WSPA with KACPAW, dog catchers and PHI officers from the Kandy Municipal Council, Nawalapitiya Urban Council, Laggala, Pallegama and Gangawata Korale Pradeshiya Sabhas and the University of Peradeniya were shown how to catch, restrain, transfer from one point to another such as to cages/vans, transport dogs, and hold them in dog pounds humanely with respect for the animal.

It was emphasised that team-work among dog catchers is essential in this humane approach. The participants were convinced that what can be done humanely should not be done inhumanely and they agreed to apply these humane dog catching techniques in the future.

They were also convinced that the use of strychnine and cyanide to kill dogs should be replaced with humane methods such as putting dogs to sleep via injection. Humane dog-catching equipment from the UK along with videos and books on guidelines on humane dog catching were distributed among participants.

The Gohagoda dog pound of the Kandy Municipal Council was visited as part of the workshop training. And that was how Gohagoda opened KACPAW converted the only other dog pound in the city limits of Kandy to a no kill shelter and have found homes to close upon 900 dogs from November 1999 to date. There are around 50 dogs, sterilized and fully vaccinated, at this shelter awaiting re-homing.

Kandy Mayor Kesara Senanayake and Kandy Municipal Council veterinary surgeon, Dr. S. R. Jayasinghe should be congratulated on this humane move, KACPAW said in a release.

Inquiries about sterilizations should be made to the faculty of Veterinary Medicine and Animal Science of the University of Peradeniya and the Government Veterinary Hospital at Getambe.

In Sri Lanka, more than 100,000 dogs are inhumanely killed annually and despite 50 years of this brutality and an annual expenditure of over Rs. 150 million on rabies control, Sri Lanka still has rabies, to which nearly 150 people succumb every year.

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