Vet World Vol.14 September-2021 Article-11
Review Article
Veterinary World, 14(9): 2371-2379
https://doi.org/10.14202/vetworld.2021.2371-2379
Abandonment of dogs in Latin America: Strategies and ideas
2. Ethology, Bioethics and Animal Welfare, Universidad La Salle, Colombia.
3. Specialist in Canine and Feline Clinic of the College of Veterinarians of the Province of Buenos Aires. Small Animal Traumatology Specialist Professional Council CABA, Argentina.
4. Veterinary Medicine of the Collective and Legal Veterinary Medicine, Federal University of Paraná, Brazil.
Background and Aim: In this article, we gathered information from postgraduate theses and scientific articles published in several databases using inclusion criteria that had been made in Latin America, in countries with similar economic conditions, and also in the USA to present a point of comparison. The objective of this review is to broaden the readers' understanding of the causes of the increasing numbers of stray dogs and the reasons why people abandon pets in the streets, specifically in Latin America. It also discusses adoption and responsible ownership, identifies what failed in promoting positive human-dog interaction, and suggests strategies to address this problem. It concludes that adoption alone is not an effective solution but that it is necessary to offer education and awareness programs for owners, organize sterilization campaigns, and develop and apply – with the corresponding authorities – measures to ensure animal welfare that will provide benefits for society and improve animal quality of life. The role of veterinarians is fundamental in education and in disseminating the necessary information to orient people before they acquire a pet and prevent animal abandonment to resolve this problem.
Keywords: canine overpopulation, dog population management, free-roaming dogs, public health, stray dogs, zoonosis.
How to cite this article: Mota-Rojas D, Calderón-Maldonado N, Lezama-García K, Sepiurka L, Garcia RCM (2021) Abandonment of dogs in Latin America: Strategies and ideas, Veterinary World, 14(9): 2371-2379.
Received: 26-03-2021 Accepted: 02-08-2021 Published online: 13-09-2021
Corresponding author: Daniel Mota-Rojas E-mail: dmota100@yahoo.com.mx
DOI: 10.14202/vetworld.2021.2371-2379
Copyright: Mota-Rojas, et al. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http:// creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.