Efforts to control stray dogs are working, an animal welfare official said on Friday last week after a visiting entertainer reported being bitten in Taipei two days earlier.
Japanese singer Chihiro Ayase on Wednesday last week wrote on social media that she was bitten in the leg after being chased by two stray dogs in Taipei’s Ximending (西門町) area earlier in the month.
Ayase was in Taiwan with the touring Tone Jewel girl group.
Photo: Screen grab from Chihiro Ayase’s X account
“We went out on the street at night and were followed by two black dogs, which started to chase me and bit me on the thigh,” she wrote. “I fell down. It was very frightening, but I got free and ran to where there was more traffic to avoid being attacked again.”
“If I had not gotten away, I feel certain I would have been killed,” she wrote. “It is scary to think about.”
“Fortunately, concert organizers swiftly took me to hospital and were helpful throughout,” Ayase wrote.
The report prompted demands for local governments to act, with some saying that reports of injuries from encounters with stray dogs had increased since a “no euthanasia” policy took effect in 2017.
The government in February 2017 promulgated rules for stray dogs to be neutered, not killed.
Critics of the policy say that it has led to a surge in reports of attacks, including on protected wildlife, as well as damage to farms.
However, Chiang Chuan-wen (江文全), head of the Ministry of Agriculture’s Animal Welfare Department, on Friday denied that there has been an uptick in attacks.
There were 3.14 incidents per month in 2019, which has dropped to 1.53 incidents per month so far this year, Chiang said, without providing a source for the data.
Most encounters are in hilly or riverside areas and it is rare for them to occur in busy, urban areas, he said.
“When a stray dog attacks a person, we inform the local government, which marks it as a hot spot and dispatches animal control units to capture the animals,” he said.
Chiang said that improvements have also been made to limit interactions between stray dogs and wildlife.
Education and training sessions were implemented after a baboon was shot by a member of the public after escaping from the Leofoo Village theme park in Hsinchu County’s Guanxi Township (關西), he said.
There has been a focus on training to coordinate local authorities, set up communication channels, dispatch animal control personnel, and protect and transport injured animals, he said.
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