Dogs and Dog Control in Developing Countries

The relationship between a community and its dogs is not always entirely positive, and many cultures identify similar problems associated with having dogs in their midst. For example, in South Africa, the Soweto community identified the problems caused by dogs as road accidents, barking and fighting, biting children and killing livestock, and uncontrolled fecal contamination (Beck 2000). Such problems exist in many cultures, throughout the developed and developing worlds. It is against this background of a wide range of man-dog relationships that dogs in the developing world must be seen and understood. Knowledge about and understanding of the complexity of the relationships between dogs and local people is essential to any attempts to regulate the human-dog relationship officially and to control any problems caused by dogs