Loose dog population has Dallas residents arming themselves with sticks

Some 9,000 dogs are roaming free in some of Dallas' poorer communities

David Trawin/Flickr

Residents of one part of Dallas have begun carrying sticks to protect themselves from a growing population of stray dogs, according to a new study.

Consultants hired to help address the decades-long problem found almost 9,000 dogs on the loose on the streets of southern Dallas.

The problem received national attention earlier this year when Antoinette Brown, 52, was mauled to death by a pack of dogs. She suffered more than 100 bites.

“It’s not that it’s 24/7, that there’s constantly dogs out and people can’t even leave their house,” chairman of the Dallas Animal Advisory Committee, Peter Brodsky, told the New York Times. “But it is a prevalent enough problem that it is really impeding on people’s quality of life, such that there’s diminished walking down the street.

“Sometimes you can’t go into a park.”

The Boston Consulting Group, who conducted the study, found 8,700 dogs roaming free in the area – whether or not they had owners.

Additionally, dog bites had increased by an annual rate of 15 per cent since 2013 – although, the study notes that the biggest uptick in bites came from dogs with owners who happened to be out on the streets.

And consultants said they had even seen locals taking steps to protect themselves, carrying sticks for protection on most routes in southern Dallas.

(The Boston Consulting Group (The Boston Consulting Group)

What stands out in the study, however, is the sheer amount of dogs found in the the lower-income area of south Dallas versus the few spotted in the more affluent north side of the city.

Only three veterinarians are available in south Dallas, leading to a situation where only 15 per cent of owners have spayed or neutered their animals. Eighty per cent of dogs are sterilised in north Dallas, the report shows.

Mr Brodsky noted that there are three veterinary clinics within a half mile from his house in northern Dallas.

JP Bonnelly, co-founder of the Street Dog Project, said a simple roundup of the dogs would not do much to solve the problem, calling dogs a “self-replenishing population”. Dogs reproduce at a rapid rate, and owners can replace their pets as quickly as they are seized.

“You can round up and kill every dog on the streets of Dallas today,” he said, “and in six months we would have the same problem because it’s the humans that cause the problem.”

Researchers and advocates both suggest that the culture of dog ownership in Dallas needs to change.

President of the Dallas Companion Animal Project, Maeleska Fletes, suggested solving the problem with a simple door-to-door campaign to educate owners and offer free spay and neuter clinics.

“I think we need to go that direction, especially since we’ve proven over and over again that catching and killing doesn’t work,” she said.