Stray Dogs Killed in Sochi, Russia to Clean Up the City for Olympics

Earlier this week, officials announced that exterminators in Sochi would be killing hundreds of stray dogs to ensure cleanliness of the city prior to the start of the Olympic Games. In response to the heinous acts, animal lovers have been looking to save as many dogs as possible.

People are outraged at the government's decision and many think the situation could have been handled differently and in a more humane manner. Kelly O'Meara, a director at Humane Society International, says that instead of killing the dogs they could have simply spayed or neutered them in order to mitigate the problem.

Unfortunately, the tight deadline probably did not allow officials to consider the most humane ways of handling the dogs; the Olympic Games were fast approaching. But animal supporters are not giving Russia a free pass on this one, especially because there are approximately 250-300 million stray dogs roaming the planet. Russia is not the only place with this problem.

What's more of a cause for concern is that stray dogs are harmless for the most part. They simply hang around neighborhoods and beg for food, while others who are shunned or treated inhumanely decide to band together in packs to ensure one another's safety and avoid people altogether. They rely on the public for food because they rarely hunt wildlife.

"Positive interaction is necessary for them to get what they need," said O'Meara in this National Geographic article. She also said there are three ways that countries deal with stray dog issues, which are killing, mass sheltering and sterilization and vaccination. Russia's decision to undertake a mass killing of hundreds of dogs was seen as tremendously inhumane by many.

Their method of killing the dogs was to use poison. They laced meat with strychnine and put it out on the street for dogs to find it. Although the method is viewed as a "silent killer," O'Meara said at times it can actually be quite horrific because in some cases a poisoned dog can take up to an hour to die.

"It's horrific and extremely painful for an animal to go through," she said.

To read more about the stray dogs in Sochi and around the world, visit this National Geographic article.