Panaji: For all the concerns raised about the welfare of stray dogs, animal lovers in Goa have failed to walk the talk. The tourism department’s invitation to animal welfare organisations and dog lovers to come forward and adopt stray dogs has not yielded a single response.The department had kept a seven-day window for dogs to be adopted, after which the department would move to relocate the dogs.“There’s nobody who came up to the office from the general public to submit the application for community dog adoption from any of the beaches,” said a tourism department official.The department had come up with an out-of-the-box idea to put dogs up for adoption in an attempt to get canines off the state’s sun-soaked beach stretches. The department had offered citizens, animal welfare organisations, and dog lovers a chance to adopt the homeless dogs within seven days, after which it planned to start sterilisation and vaccination of strays found along beach stretches.The department then wants to relocate the dogs to designated and authorised animal shelters in accordance with the law and based on directions of Supreme Court.With animal lovers staying away from the stray dogs, the department will now return to the drawing board to decide on the next step. Meanwhile, the department has asked the animal husbandry department and the panchayats along the coastline to help survey the dogs on the beach.“We need to know how many dogs are there on the beach, how many of them are vaccinated, how many of them have bitten people already and how many of them are ferocious,” said a department official.Shack operators had also urged govt to address stray dog management in high-footfall tourist areas. Referring to the frequent instances of tourists and lifeguards being bitten or chased by stray dogs, shack owners welfare society president Cruz Cardozo said that public safety and humane treatment of animals must go hand in hand.
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