Stray Dog - Stray Dogs Vs Feral Dogs

Stray Dogs Vs Feral Dogs

Experts in the area of free-ranging dog control sometimes distinguish between stray dogs and feral dogs. The former is used to refer to lost and abandoned pets or others that had been socialized to humans before taking to the free-ranging life, and the latter to those which have lived all their lives apart from people. This distinction is important to them because stray dogs can be relatively easily taken into captivity, whereas feral dogs are more fearful and difficult to keep as pets, and so are more often captured, spayed or neutered, and released back into in the parks, vacant lots, and other hiding places on the margins of human society where they are most commonly found.

In other contexts, and generally in Indian English, the term "stray dog" covers both feral dogs and dogs that have strayed from their owners. India has a population of feral dogs numbering in the tens of millions, the highest in the world, and millions of people are bitten every year, with about 20,000 people dying annually from rabies. When discussing these issues in the Indian context, distinctions between stray and feral dogs are less clear or important, so the term "stray dog" is used to cover both stray and feral dogs, and to distinguish them from the wild dog of India.