On a mission

As the saying goes,charity begins at home,doing good for the society starts with looking after one's own neighbourhood.

As the saying goes,charity begins at home,doing good for the society starts with looking after one’s own neighbourhood. This was precisely the ideology,which inspired Darshana Mazumdar to work towards controlling the stray dog menace in her neighbourhood of Viman Nagar. An endevour,which saw her being honoured with the Prithvi Doot award by Bluewiss,an NGO that works for the conservation of biodiversity in the city. Mazumdar intended to take her work to the next level while working on the same. Controlling the dog population does not mean killing them, says Mazumdar,founder member of the Pune Animal Lovers’ (PALS) group,adding,One has to think scientifically and logically to make the city free of stray dogs. Sterilisation is the best way to deal with this problem,but that too needs proper strategy and implementation,

It was in early June last year that she struck on the idea of getting the dogs of her vicinity sterilised. She started by establishing a friendly relationship with the dogs in the area near the Symbioses College in Viman Nagar. Stray dogs are not friendly at all. They can get very aggressive if you come near them and this is why there is a problem of dogs biting people. In order to improve the comfort levels with them,I started feeding them regularly. They started recognising me in a week’s time,but I took about a month to muster enough courage to pick up the dogs,put them in my car and take them to the sterilisation centre, recalls Mazumdar.

The three dogs,which she took on the first trip were malnourished and small in size. They were petrified when I put them in the car and they created such a mess. I got them operated upon and brought them back from where I had picked them up, she says. Mazumdar has voluntarily taken 35 such stray dogs to get them sterilised and dropped them back to their locality. This way the dog population will not drastically drop all of a sudden,but atleast we know that the area will not have more puppies to deal with, she explains.

In fact,now,she has taken up the issue of stray dog sterilisation with the PMC and Blue Cross,a city-based NGO for animal welfare. According to her,the sterilisation initiative involves a procedure where the dog squad at PMC will pick up the dogs from a particular area and document the sex,colour and area to which the dog belongs before dropping it to the sterilisation centres and will drop them back to the same spot after the operation. She says,The dog squad does not understand the importance of dropping the dog back to the place from where It was picked up. This creates a bigger mess as dogs are territorial animals. When new dogs invade into the territory of other dogs,they fight and it gets very ugly.

The award is an honour and I am grateful that it has made people aware of the work that needs to be done in the society. I hope more people will be encouraged to get involved with such volunteer work for the preservation of the city as well as the welfare of the street dogs, she says.

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Viman Nagar