Stray dogs save life of tiny baby thrown into drain

Forgive me, but I want to write about dogs today and I need an outlet for it so I have chosen this website. This is a story from India where female infanticide is not that uncommon because it is linked to extreme poverty and the need to provide a marriage dowry.

Screenshot from video. The dogs paw at the package containing the premature baby.

In this instance a woman was caught on a security camera throwing a plastic bundle into a muddy drain in the Indian town of Kaithal, in the state of Haryana in the early morning. She disappeared immediately.

The baby started to cry and a pack of street dogs picked up the sound perhaps instinctively searching for something to eat. They pulled the crying child out of the drain and pawed at the plastic package and started to bark. This alerted passers-by who discovered the child. They called the police.

The police are examining the security camera footage to try and find the woman. They want to identify her in order to charge her with a criminal offence. It is said that the baby was born prematurely after about seven months of pregnancy judging by her size and weight.

They are keeping the baby under observation and don't want to transfer her to a larger hospital because that might be in life-threatening to her.

The baby weighs 2 lbs 4 oz and was in a serious condition. The story is about dogs saving the life of the baby. They saved the baby's life accidentally in truth. It wasn't a deliberate and consciously made decision to save this baby's life. They simply alerted people to what was going on. But it is nonetheless an interesting story of life in India, on the ground and at the sharp end.

I'll mention cats just to make this article relevant to this website. In India there are community cats. Yes, people do own domestic cats and sometimes they keep them in their apartments just like they do in the West but there are many more stray cats wandering around the community scavenging and surviving and occasionally being fed by shopkeepers et cetera. It's a very harsh life for community cats.

I recall the director of PETA in India mentioning how harsh it was and how the cats can be injured and killed by traffic and cruelly abused by some people who dislike them. As a result PETA in India decided to operate a TNR program which somewhat goes against the grain for this organisation because they tend to believe that feral cats should be euthanised in order to put them out of their misery. That's a misdescription really because in America PETA does advocate TNR provided the cats can be properly cared for and are in an environment which does not make their lives intolerable. That must be a difficult decision.

Clearly a lot needs to be done about domestic cat ownership in India. To me, it is way too careless and thoughtless. There far too much suffering by cats and dogs who end up as strays. It's frankly quite horrific. That's not to take anything away from genuine cat loving cat guardians of which there are probably a good numer in India.