SINGAPORE - A new facility to rehabilitate stray dogs to make them suitable for rehoming has been set up.
The Animal and Veterinary Service (AVS) opened the Centre for Animal Rehabilitation on Thursday (March 31) at 6 Perahu Road in Lim Chu Kang.
The AVS is a cluster within the National Parks Board.
Rehabilitation at the centre, which will have an area designed to mimic a home environment featuring dining and living rooms, will involve habituating stray dogs to practices like being leashed and the sounds of household objects like vacuum cleaners.
At the new centre, 13 dogs can be rehabilitated at any one time. Eight dogs are undergoing rehabilitation at the centre since February.
Dr Chang Siow Foong, the group director of Professional and Scientific Services at AVS, said he hopes such exposure will allow the usually skittish animals to become more accustomed to living with humans and reduce responses like excessive fear and aggression.
He said: "Many of these stray animals may not be socialised to interactions in the urban environment, sights and sounds in a home. As a result, they will carry a bit of fear, anxiety and stress when they are brought into this new environment."
Dr Chang added that most stray dogs require some form of rehabilitation before they can be rehomed.
The centre is the latest addition to the nation-wide programme to rein in Singapore's stray dog population introduced in 2018.
Under the Trap-Neuter-Release-Manage (TNRM) programme, stray dogs are trapped and neutered, before they are rehomed in a shelter or home, or released back into the wild where they are monitored after being micro-chipped.
The programme aims to sterilise more than 70 per cent of stray dogs by 2023. Since its introduction in November 2018, public feedback on stray dogs has decreased by more than 60 per cent.
But one of the problems facing successful rehoming is behavioural issues like excessive anxiety.
To address this, Project Rehab, a dog rehabilitation pilot programme, was introduced in 2019 to eliminate behavioural problems in stray dogs and ease them into human care.
Since the pilot programme was introduced, more than 70 dogs have been rehomed successfully into animal shelters or homes.
At the opening ceremony on Thursday, Minister of State for National Development Tan Kiat How also announced that AVS will be partnering with the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (SPCA) to review the post-rehabilitation process of stray dogs.
This is to ensure that progress made during rehabilitation will not be lost after they are rehomed into shelters or homes, which can be a traumatic experience for dogs.
Ms Aarthi Sankar, executive director at SPCA, said: "This partnership enables SPCA staff to work hand in hand with AVS staff to rehome animals and at the same time, share key information and best practices on how we should rehabilitate these animals as well."
She added that it would also make it easier for a potential adopter to consider adopting a stray once they know that the dogs have been habituated to human environments.
