The newspaper El Nacional highlights a growing stray dog problem plaguing the streets of Venezuela’s cities this week, triggered by impoverished residents unable to afford dog food and vaccines releasing their animals into the wild.
Most of the dogs are starving and taking over garbage-lined street corners, blocking Venezuelans who scavenge for their own food there. Stray dogs were already a problem in major cities, and reports from as far back as 2016 indicate that the nation’s poorest hunt and eat these dogs. In January, a non-governmental organization (NGO) found that many Venezuelans, unable to afford food for themselves anymore, were buying dog food to feed their families.
El Nacional cites a local NGO, the Canine Support Network (RAC), as finding a sharp spike in the number of pet abandonments documented in the past two years.
“Unfortunately, we see ourselves immersed in this difficult economic crossroads and there are people who, perhaps against their will, see themselves in the difficult situation of abandoning their pet,” Moisés González, who helps direct the group’s spay and neuter efforts, told the newspaper. “I would say we found a 100 percent increase in the number of people who write to us because they can no longer have their pets because they are leaving the country or they don’t have the resources [to feed it].”
El Nacional documents the amount of money it takes to keep a dog in the country. A kilo of dog food, it notes, costs between $0.44 (95,000 bolivares) and $1.40 (300,000 bolivares); the newspaper suggests this amount of food lasts two to three days. A vaccine for a dog could cost as much as $2,327.15 (five million bolivares). The government-mandated monthly minimum wage currently stands at $1.15, according to the exchange rate at currency monitor Dolar Today. READ MORE
