ANIMAL welfare groups and volunteer vets in Selangor achieved a milestone when they teamed up to carry out a mass neutering campaign on June 27 at Pulau Ketam, where 23 dogs (pets and strays) and seven pet cats were neutered.

As more and more Malaysians demonstrate greater concern for animal welfare, there is a vital need to ensure that stray cats and dogs and free-roaming pets that have been neutered be identified as such.

At the moment, there is no requirement that spayed and neutered pets and strays must carry any sort of marking to identify them as neutered animals.

There is, therefore, a risk that precious resources may be wasted recapturing and conducting exploratory surgery on neutered animals just to find out their reproductive history.

Of course, putting an animal under anaesthesia to conduct unnecessary surgery is also highly traumatic and stressful to the animal, as well as a waste of time and manpower.

Several independent animal groups that conduct trap-neuter-and-release programmes use ear-tipping to identify neutered cats. However, ear-tipping does not work as well for dogs, as not all dogs have pointed ears.

Also, some pet owners object to ear-tipping their pets when adopting from shelters, pounds and rescue groups, and an unobtrusive tattoo near the site of the spay or neuter incision would offer a more aesthetically acceptable solution.

If executed by a qualified vet, tattooing performed under anaesthesia at the same time as a major surgery (i.e. neutering or spaying) is an inexpensive, safe, painless and stress-free procedure.

It is also a permanent way of marking an animal, compared to merely using special collars, ID tags and ear tags.

In some developed nations, the law forbids the use of tattooed animals in laboratory experiments, or the euthanasia of tattooed animals by animal-control units.

The only drawback of tattooing is that the equipment should be autoclaved between each use to prevent infections and blood-transmitted diseases, but that should be done for all surgical equipment as a matter of course by any competent vet anyway.

Perhaps the Veterinary Services Department, animal welfare groups and local councils can explore the possibility of coming up with a universally accepted and recognisable way of identifying neutered and released strays and free-roaming pets.

If a system could be set up whereby tattooing could be a means of identifying pets and of tracing them back to their owners, local councils could also consider creating a system where tattooed pets may not be impounded, or if impounded, may not be euthanised until all efforts to trace the owners have been made.

This move may go a long way towards streamlining mass neutering campaigns and trap-neuter-and-release strategies, and at the same time create awareness that neutering pets and strays benefits animal health and human society.

WONG EE LYNN, Petaling Jaya

Source: NST – July 9, 2009