Written by: Siddhartha Krishnan | 5 Min Read

The story of human evolution is incomplete without the story of the dog. Few realise how profoundly this animal has shaped our journey from hunter–gatherers to modern society. At every stage of our history, they have been there, watching, guarding, and walking alongside us.

Dogs were not a gift from the heavens; they were a creation of our own making. We took one of nature’s most formidable predators, the wolf, our competitor for food and territory, and reshaped it. We played God. Through selective breeding, we transformed the wolf into a companion uniquely suited to human needs. The result was a creature that could guard our homes, protect us from wild animals, charge into battle with us, detect illnesses we did not know we had, and lift our spirits when we are at our lowest. Caregiver, protector, sentinel, confidant, above all, friend.

This is not a short chapter in our shared history. Scientific evidence traces dog domestication back at least 15,000 years, with some archaeological finds suggesting it could be as far back as 30,000 years. Dogs were the first species we domesticated, long before livestock or crops entered the human story. In evolving with us, they have learned to read us in ways we can barely comprehend, sometimes better than we understand ourselves.

And yet, for all this history, we are in danger of betraying them. In a deeply unsettling move, the Supreme Court has ordered that every stray dog across Delhi-NCR be rounded up, sterilised, vaccinated, and permanently housed in shelters within eight weeks—no dog may be released back into the streets. The directive comes amid alarming rises in bite cases and rabies threats, especially to children.

However, this directive by the top court should not come as a surprise. It was in the offing, for it is convenient to round up strays, confine them to pounds, and without the budget to sterilize and vaccinate secretly cull them. Its easy because they cannot retaliate. Meanwhile, murderers, rapists, thieves, drug peddlers, and rioters walk our streets with impunity, protected by laws, political interests, and human networks. We tolerate that depravity. We can excuse that apathy. But stray dogs are easy targets.

The current directive to remove them en masse is the easy, lazy route. But here is the truth: it will not solve the problem. For as long as humans exist, dogs will remain beside us. In the remotest villages, in deserts and snowbound mountains, in tribal forests, and of course in cities, wherever there is human settlement, there will be dogs. They have evolved that way. They cannot live without us. What we fail to grasp is that, in many ways, we cannot live without them.

Dogs provide invisible services: guarding homes, deterring wild animals, alerting communities to danger. They protect us not only from other humans but also from the threats of the natural world. Yes, there are incidents of bites, even rare cases of mauling. But how do those numbers compare, percentage for percentage, to the violence humans inflict on each other and on every other species we share this planet with?

There is also the matter of education. Communities, especially children, need to be taught how to behave in the presence of animals. Much of what we call man–animal conflict is rooted not in aggression, but in ignorance. A lack of understanding of animal behaviour can turn an avoidable situation into a dangerous one. The absence of any sustained awareness programmes by civic authorities only aggravates the problem.

Most of us are unaware of what the Animal Birth Control (Dogs) Rules, 2023 mandate, what the Animal Welfare Board of India’s Housing and Society Guidelines require, or what the Board prescribes for the feeding and care of strays. Even fewer know the protections guaranteed under the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act, which makes harming an animal a punishable offence. This ignorance leaves people vulnerable to misinformation and strips animals of the protection the law already provides them.

We litter the streets, drawing strays to scavenge. We fail to enforce sterilisation, vaccination, and monitoring programmes that could humanely control their numbers. Some pet owners, out of negligence or convenience, abandon their animals, fuelling the cycle further. The fault is ours, not theirs.

To cast aside a dog today is like telling a childhood friend to leave because you no longer have the time or mental clarity to engage with them. The bond between humans and dogs is not a casual arrangement; it is one of the oldest partnerships in history. Breaking it is more than a betrayal of trust, it is a denial of who we are.

If we forget the dog’s role in our rise, we risk forgetting the very traits that made us human: loyalty, cooperation, and trust. In doing so we may be digging our own grave.

***

About the author:

Siddhartha Krishnan is the author of ‘Two and a Half Rainbows – A Collection of Short Stories’. An enthusiastic blogger he shares his essays, travelogues, book and movie reviews on his blog (www.whatsonsidsmind.com).

All rights reserved by http://www.whatsonsidsmind.com

***