Louis who's been working with feral dogs there for decades, says the dogs emerge from alleys and abandoned buildings to look for food in early dawn or bad weather. The epidemic has gone largely unnoticed because urban feral dogs and cats have extraordinary skills at remaining invisible. The exact number of feral dogs and cats is unknown, but there are certainly well over 100 million at this point. And the more we take in, the more we drop back on the street, where they procreate at a speed that would make Rick Santorum beam. Dog ownership has tripled since the 1960s. In 1970 we had 30 million pet cats today we have 90 million. America is turning into a nation of pet hoarders. There are lots of reasons for this - reduced animal control, the resurgence of dogfighting - but at base, the feral explosion has coincided with our ever-rising demand for furry little friends. "It's a topic nobody talks about, but over the past 20 years it's become an underground epidemic in most cities." "The problem is way worse than people assume," says Randy Grim, founder of Stray Rescue of St. But the controversy also illuminated a serious - and largely ignored - urban issue: the soaring number of feral cats and dogs, and cities' decreasing ability to deal with them. Now that's the new austerity.Īmid the predictable outcry, the city promised it would reconsider the policy. Instead, it said, they should release them in another area, adopt them themselves - or just put a bullet in them. The city of Harrisburg, Pa., learned this last week when an internal police department memo went public, instructing officers of the cash-strapped city to stop bringing its growing number of stray dogs to the shelter. Want to get people riled up? Institute a new policy about shooting puppies.
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