HIGH-TECH PET RESCUE
Adoption apps fill a need
● Asia has a dog problem. There are 30 million stray dogs in India. In Beijing and Tianjin, there are 1.3 million homeless dogs and cats. Some 70,000 puppies are born annually on the streets of Thailand, while Bali has half a million dogs — many of them homeless.
The Asian animal welfare groups that collect these figures say the stray pet population is continuing to grow, along with its associated problems: noise pollution, animal abuse, the dogfighting industry and the dog meat trade. In China alone, 10 million dogs are eaten annually, according to The charity AnimalsAsia.
Dog bites are also the primary cause of rabies — a potentially fatal disease that causes inflammation of the human brain. According to the World Health Organization, 95% of the tens of thousands of rabies deaths a year occur in Asia and Africa.
Sterilisation can stem the tide of feral pets. According to People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, an unsterilised cat and her offspring can produce hundreds of thousands of kittens in just a few years. Embedding pets with microchips encoded with registration data also helps by improving the culture of pet ownership. Since the start of this year, all dogs and cats bought and sold in Jakarta must be microchipped.
Euthanasia is a more common solution. In Singapore, 6,000 dogs and 12,000 cats are put to sleep every year. But in developing countries like India and Thailand, dogs are routinely poisoned, electrocuted or beaten to death.
Animal welfare groups such as the Humane Society believe adoption is the most humane and utilitarian solution because it reduces demand from “puppy mills” — factory-style breeding facilities that put profit above animal welfare.
But in Asia, where animal welfare is its infancy and shelters are often run by communities and volunteers, finding good homes for unwanted pets is difficult.
“I get 10 calls a day from people wanting to adopt a dog or cat, but they’re often unsuitable,” said Janice Girardi, the American founder of Bali Animal Welfare Association, which operates several dog shelters on the Indonesian island.
“I got one call this morning from someone asking for a small female dog and I said no because I knew [the caller was] a breeder. Overbreeding of dogs is the single biggest cause of the stray pet problem because it causes people to continue to throw pets away.”
A group of pet-loving technology enthusiasts in the central Javanese city of Jogjakarta has invented a potential solution to the problem of organising safe adoptions. Adopsi is a free Android app that connects people interested in adopting a dog or cat with animal shelters and people who need to give their pets away.
Developed by Oninyon, a small software company in Jogjakarta, Adopsi has 15,000 users in Java and Bali who between them have facilitated nearly 400 pet adoptions since the app’s launch in 2016.
“Our mission is to teach people that you can adopt a pet rather than buy one from a store,” said Oninyon founder Bobby Fernando. “But we have another mission — to raise awareness about animal welfare in Indonesia through our blog and community events.”
Monique Vanderharst, the Australian founder of Animal Friends Jogja, a rescue group currently caring for 100 cats, 30 dogs and nine monkeys at a halfway house in Jogjakarta, said Adopsi has proved beneficial.
“We use it to get our messages out to potential adopters and reach a much wider section of the public than we can on Facebook,” she said.
“People can flick through lots of animals, put in their applications that our adoption manager can easily sort through to check they will make good adopters. We’d have a much lower number of adoptions without it.”
Dave Hodgkin, an aid worker based in Jogjakarta, said that adopting a stray dog had changed his life. “I never wanted to own a dog. I always thought they were environmentally irresponsible and that the whole industry of puppy mills was cruel,” he said.
“But in 2016, I had a major back operation and my doctor said I needed to walk each day to strengthen it. And it’s proven that dog owners do a lot of walking.”
Hodgkin adopted a dog called Red that had been stolen and mistreated until it landed at Animal Friends Jogja’s halfway house. The two are now inseparable. “I never imagined dogs had so much personality and could get so thoroughly under your skin. I honestly can’t imagine my life without Red,” said Hodgkin.
Fernando is now crowdfunding to raise money for Adopsi 2.0 — a new version of the app for Android and Apple smartphones that will have geolocation technology as well as text in English and other languages. He also plans to monetise the app with a virtual pet that users can adopt and buy credits to take care of — much like Japan’s Tamagotchi handheld digital pets.
“At first we didn’t want to monetise it, but an app needs money to grow, so we’re raising money to rebuild it and take it global,” he said. “People can install our mascot in their smartphone and buy merchandise. But we also want to keep our idealism about animal welfare in check.”
That could prove difficult, said Vaidas Gecevicus, a creative technologies expert in Lithuania who launched GetPet, another pet adoption app, earlier this year. GetPet allows only registered dog shelters to offer pets for adoption.
“We chose not to make GetPet a peerto-peer app but a platform for Lithuanian pet shelters because if there’s a disagreement, pet shelters have legal documents that can prove, for example, that a dog wasn’t stolen,” he said.
“And we haven’t found a suitable way to monetise the project because it’s a slippery slope. Finding responsible partners to grow and scale this app has proved difficult despite the number of inquiries we get from overseas.”
Girardi is also sceptical of pet adoption apps, especially those like Adopsi that operate peer-to-peer. “Before we give up an animal for adoption, we inspect potential adopters’ homes, talk to their children, find out if they have a pool, what their plans are if they go on vacations,” she said.
“But with an app, [animals] may end up going to people who can’t look after them in the long run or with breeders who cage and chain them for the rest of their lives, which is a much worse fate than being butchered for dog meat. We recently found a dog with a chain that had grown into its neck.
She added: “An app like this could do more harm than good, and I don’t think Bali is ready for it, not until animal welfare improves.
“We’re investing in robust education programmes at schools. We’ve already reached 100,000 primary school children across the island and next year we’re doubling it. That’s the way to solve this — teach the next generation about empathy for animals because it’s not being taught at home.”
“Overbreeding of dogs is the single biggest cause of the stray pet problem because it causes people to continue to throw pets away”
JANICE GIRARDI Bali Animal Welfare Association