Last week the newly built municipal dog pound was opened in the Shekhoret industrial area.  According to the City veterinarian, who said he sees the establishment of the pound as a realisation of a personal dream, it will improve the handling of stray or quarantined dogs immeasurably and bring Eilat's standards up to match those of the big cities in regard to the animals' conditions and welfare, and the service. 

The new dog pound, built at a cost of ca. one million shekels, offers better conditions to the dogs than the notoriously poor one until now.  It has 22 well-ventilated compartments with temperature control, and elevated sleeping platforms for the dogs made of thermal material that preserves body heat.  One of the cells will be used to keep cats in that have been quarantined.  Because the law allows quarantine of a cat that so much as scratched someone, even an owned one in a completely justified context such as a stranger trying to grab hold of it with a barking dog at his heels, as happened to one of my cats once, there is a need to accommodate cats as well.  It should be noted that there has never been a rabid cat found in Eilat nor, to the best of this writer's knowledge, a rabid dog.  There have been rabid foxes on the outskirts of the city a couple of times, however, looking for food where a healthy fox would fear to tread. 

The City points out that the dog pound is, like its predecessor, for quarantine purposes and will not serve as kennels.  It will, however, house and supervise some stray dogs until a solution is found for them.  Due to it having double the number of cages as the old one, the time for which a stray or abandoned dog can be held in hopes of someone perhaps coming to adopt it can be extended somewhat.

Pet shops are not allowed by law to sell dogs and cats, although Limor Cohen's shop is kind enough to usually house a couple of abandoned cats or dogs at any given time for customers to adopt. 

While the new Pound might be an additional partial solution for animals who, through no fault of their own, are rendered homeless and unloved, prey to illness, injury, and starvation in the streets, what is really needed is education:  Education on the importance of spay/neuter*, education on what to expect from an animal and how to properly take care of and train it, and education in basic decency about not abandoning a living being just because it's become an inconvenience or gone out of fashion.  The place to start is the schools, as children tend to naturally love animals until parents or society train it out of them - when in fact it should be doing exactly the opposite:

"We can judge the heart of a man by his treatment of animals." ~Immanuel Kant

"Anyone who has accustomed himself to regard the life of any living creature as worthless is in danger of arriving also at the idea of worthless human life". ~ Albert Schweitzer

"The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated" ~Gandhi (1869-1948)

"The measure of a society can be how well its people treat its animals." ~Mohandas Gandhi

* According to statistics: One female dog and her offspring can produce 67,000 dogs in 6 years time. One female cat and her offspring can produce 20,736 in 4 years time. ~The Humane Society of the United States