26/08/2025
Apparently today is International Dog Day. As far as we are concerned, this should be every day, but instead of celebrating our canine companions, we have to yet again comment on the tragic reality of our local council shooting dogs.
Before I go on – because not everyone reading this will be an animal lover – I need to state very clearly that ZAWS values human life and public health and safety as a top priority. We preach kindness, and that includes people, animals and the environment. Some things you won’t know about us – sometimes where we see families in need of help we take them food parcels for them as well as their animals. Sometimes we bring children who live difficult lives to the shelter and give them a fun afternoon of art and games and good food. That lady whose garden was trashed by elephants recently – it was ZAWS who took her some food for her family, not the keyboard warriors commenting on the news reports. We are not going to tell you that dogs’ lives matter more than people, but we are going to say that dogs’ lives matter, and that how a community and organisations conduct themselves also matters.
The dog in the picture below was shot this morning by DNPW officers who were accompanied by Livingstone City Council workers under the mandate of a Tie-Up Order issued dated 18 August 2025. The dog survived and managed to run and hide. When an eye witness challenged the council workers he was told that it doesn’t matter that the dog was only wounded, the dog will die anyway. Luckily the dog was rushed to the vet and hopefully will survive. The dog is owned. The dog is cared for. The dog is vaccinated. The dog was just a few metres from his house.
There are going to be those that say the council’s tie up order is clear, so it is fair that the dog was shot. I believe that is missing the bigger picture, but let me come back to this.
It is a legal requirement that all dogs be vaccinated against rabies. No one can argue against this. Rabies is a terrible and fatal disease. Anyone who owns a dog who fails to keep the dog vaccinated is someone who doesn’t care about their community, never mind their dog.
We are told that the justification for killing dogs is in part to reduce the risk of rabies in people. There is over 40 years of science which shows that culling dogs does not control rabies. Both The Global Alliance for Rabies Control and The World Health Organisation – organisations that deal with human health – debunk the notion that culling dogs control rabies. Both organisations state (with research quoted) that the only method of reducing rabies in humans is mass vaccination of domestic dogs. Look at what happened in Morocco earlier this year. Morocco kills dogs rather than vaccinates. A tourist was scratched by a stray dog in February. Two weeks later she showed symptoms and in June she died of rabies. Owned and wandering dogs all need to be vaccinated.
Dogs should also be kept within the owner’s yard, but we know that very many dog owners do not have fenced plots and so dogs wander around their local areas and when hormones are roused they can go far looking for a mate. There are some owners who fail to feed their dogs so those poor souls have to search for food from rubbish pits. This is why ZAWS works so hard to spay & neuter as many dogs (and cats) as possible and spread knowledge about the care and feeding of dogs. We do free vaccinations and treatments for all the dogs we spay & neuter.
We have been spreading the message of responsible dog ownership for ten years now, but the message still needs to go further. Owners who lock their dogs in tiny boxes and crates during the day then let them out at night are giving their dogs miserable, traumatic lives and are deliberately not allowing their dogs to feel comfortable around people. These owners think they are making good guard dogs. They are not. They are intentionally mentally and physically harming their animals and putting other people at risk because their dogs are scared, unsocialised and often in pain, which makes them much more likely to bite. We strongly believe that authorities can make Livingstone’s streets safer by addressing these issues of abuse and punishing the owners. These are the owners that will just go and get another dog and repeat the same behaviour. Nothing will change. People will still be bitten.
We are also told that the council is mandated to shoot dogs. This is what the Control of Dogs Act says:
"Any dog over the apparent age of four months, if found without a badge issued in respect of such dog, or without a collar bearing its owner's name and address, MAY be forthwith destroyed by any officer…"
“IF FOUND…” “MAY” not “MUST”. It is only lawful to destroy the dog after establishing that the dog has no badge or collar bearing the owner’s name and address. To date, in the many times I have talked to eye witnesses regarding this topic, not one has ever told me that an official stopped to check whether the dog is bearing a collar or not. So let’s be clear – the dog MUST be found without a collar or badge and if so it MAY be destroyed. This in fact is the law.
Yesterday I visited the council and raised this very issue with the official I spoke to and I requested that instructions are given to check for papers and allow owners to produce them. I also suggested doing door to door visits in areas that are dog-bite “hot spots” to understand the issues better. We also discussed a joint event to mark World Rabies Day, but I can’t now see that as a possibility.
So back to my comment for those that think the tie up order is clear – the point is this. Killing dogs does not reduce the risk of rabies, as the population can recover faster than they are being killed. Controlling rabies is a percentage game. There needs to be 70% of the dog population vaccinated to slow the spread of the disease. So when a vaccinated dog is shot, that reduces the percentage of vaccinated dogs and opens up space for unvaccinated dogs. Secondly, it does not reduce dog bites. Dogs that bite are almost always due to bad treatment from their owner, so tackling issues of animal abuse, poor care and lack of knowledge is the only way to improve this situation.
So if killing dogs does not reduce the risk of rabies or of dog bites, what then is the point?
Dog owners should comply with the law. We have previously on many occasions suggested reducing the fee for registration to encourage more people to register, but we note that instead the registration fee increased from 50kw to 75kw.
Dog owners should learn to care for their animals so that they are socialised and calm. Dogs are not born vicious. They are made vicious deliberately by their owners. I remember one case of a big dog kept locked in a 1m x 1m cage all day with no food, water, companionship or exercise. The dog viciously attacked a domestic worker several times. I was called in to advise and I could see that the dog was mentally, physically, emotionally and spiritually broken as a result of how he was being treated. Eventually the police were called to shoot the dog. What did the owner do? Get another dog and lock it in the same cage and block my number. I wonder how many people the new dog bit.
There really is nothing here that I haven’t said since the shooting campaign in 2015. Imagine how much better things could have been if investment had been made in vaccines not bullets and in stiff punishment for abusers?
I am so sorry for the dogs that died painfully and needlessly today, for the owners that have lost their pets, for the children and adults now deeply traumatised by having seen this happen. I’m so sorry for all the dogs and people that will suffer tomorrow and for the rest of the week. I’m so sorry for those people that will get bitten in future because the current strategy is not effective in stopping roaming dogs or preventing dogs becoming aggressive. I wish we could do more to effect change.
The only strategies that work to control rabies and reduce dog bites are mass vaccination, humane population control through spaying and neutering and education, sensitisation and where necessary enforcement to counter animal abuse.
Thank you to the Veterinary Association of Zambia and all the good people who stand up for animal welfare.
