Stray by Birth: How Geography Decides a Dog’s Fate
A dog does not choose where they are born.
Yet that single, uncontrollable fact determines whether they will be protected or persecuted, cherished or killed.
For millions of dogs worldwide, geography is destiny.
The Accident of Birth
A puppy born inside a home, registered with a vet, and photographed for social media begins life with assumed value. Their safety is implicit. Their suffering, should it occur, is considered unacceptable.
A puppy born on a street, behind a market, or beside a building site begins life marked as expendable. From their first breath, they are framed as a problem to be solved rather than a life to be protected.
Nothing about the dog is different not their capacity for fear, pain, loyalty, or joy. The only difference is location.
Borders of Compassion
In some countries, stray dogs are tolerated, managed, and increasingly protected through sterilisation, vaccination, and community care. In others, their presence is treated as a moral failure, a public nuisance, or a threat regardless of evidence.
Municipal policies vary wildly, not based on science or welfare outcomes, but on politics, image management, and public pressure. A dog crossing a border does not change, but their legal status does. What was once a life worth managing humanely can become one deemed disposable overnight.
This inconsistency exposes a hard truth: animal welfare is not universal. It is conditional.
Poverty, Policy, and Blame
Stray dogs are often blamed for the conditions that created them. Overpopulation is blamed on the animals themselves rather than on inadequate sterilisation programmes, unregulated breeding, abandonment, or weak enforcement of animal welfare laws.
In regions facing economic hardship or political instability, animals are pushed even further down the list of priorities. Compassion is framed as a luxury. Violence is excused as necessity.
But suffering does not become acceptable because resources are limited. It becomes more urgent.
When Survival Is Criminalised
In many places, simply existing as a stray dog is enough to justify harm. Dogs are poisoned, shot, rounded up, or left to die in shelters without care not because they are aggressive, but because they are visible.
Their survival becomes an offence.
The language used to describe them - infestation, menace, risk strips them of individuality and prepares the public to accept cruelty as reasonable. Geography determines not only their treatment, but the narrative used to excuse it.
The Myth of Elsewhere
There is a comforting illusion that cruelty is a distant problem something that happens over there, in places perceived as less developed or less civilised. This belief allows societies to avoid self-examination.
Yet the logic is the same everywhere. When dogs are valued only when owned, only when profitable, only when convenient, geography is merely the excuse not the cause.
Stray dogs exist in every country. What differs is how openly we tolerate their suffering.
What Geography Shouldn’t Decide
A dog’s right to live should not depend on borders, budgets, or public image. It should not hinge on whether kindness is politically expedient.
Being born in the wrong place should not be a death sentence.
Until societies accept responsibility for the animals they have created through breeding, abandonment, and neglect dogs will continue to pay the price for human failure. And until geography stops deciding whose lives are worth saving, the label stray will remain one of the most dangerous a dog can carry.
Because no dog is born disposable.
They are made so by us.