Friendly dogs to be painted blue in bid to curb killer canine attacks

Desperate district officials in Baheri, Bareilly, in the northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh, which has been reeling under the attack of killer dogs who have devoured as many as five children in the last 40 days, have come up with an unusual way to tackle the menace. District authorities said on Thursday that starting on March 1, they will start painting dogs that people need not fear, blue. This, they added, would help differentiate 'normal' dogs from the killer ones.

"The teams which had been constituted to track the killer packs were unable to differentiate between normal dogs and the aggressive ones. Therefore, it was decided at a meeting convened by the district magistrate and attended by scientists of the Indian Veterinary Research Institute as well as forest and police officials, to paint the normal ones with blue color. This will help us in distinguishing the dogs even from a distance," said Rameshwarnath Tiwari, Sub-Divisional Magistrate for Baheri. As to how they will go about coloring the dogs, the SDM said, "It will be difficult for us to catch them and paint them.

"Instead, we will get villagers to pour buckets of thick blue paint on the animals. The color is expected to remain on the dogs for at least 10 days." But with Holi around the corner, wouldn't such arbitrary coloring add to the confusion? "We will also be marking the dogs that have been painted blue with a cross mark to prevent confusion," said the SDM, adding that a team comprising nearly 15 villagers along with officials of the forest department and Nagar Palika will start combing the affected villages from Sunday. "Our plan is to give drugs to the dogs to induce behavioral changes as well as sterilize them for controlling their population," he added.
The administration's plan, though, hasn't found much favor with animal activists. "Painting dogs is not a solution to this serious menace," said Dheeraj Pathak of the NGO, People for Animals. "There is a possibility that villagers may end up painting the wrong set of dogs. Also, if buckets full of color are poured on dogs, there is a high possibility that the color would enter their eyes and affect their eyesight." Some villagers were also not exactly convinced about the painting project. Bhupinder Singh, headman of Tanda Meernagar village, said that the problem cannot be solved like this. "The district authorities need to catch or kill the ferocious dogs. If there is further delay, more lives can be lost."