Birth Control Shots for Wild Dogs Could Change Way of Life on Indian Reservations in West

Birth control shots? For dogs?

While this might sound rather insane out of context, history shows us that it's a more humane attempt to control the wild dog population in Western parts of the United States. 

According to The Houston Chronicle, just a little over a decade ago, the Rosebud Sioux Indians in South Dakota were paying people to catch and shoot wild dogs whom are believed to have survived mostly by eating each other.

Ruth Steinberg notes, viaThe Chronicle, that in a period of eight years, the tribe worked together to sterilize 7,000 dogs, moving 1,500 of them to other parts of the country for adoption.

As many U.S. tribes still rely on roundups to manage dog overpopulation, The Chronicle notes that " veterinarians (now) plan to catch and inject 300 wild female dogs with a birth control vaccine that has worked on white-tailed deer, wild horses, wallabies and ferrets."

The two-year test using the government vaccine GonaCon will begin in September on isolate Indian reservations in the West, according to Steinberger, who is the project manager.

According to GonaCon's website, it states that the drug "induces the body to make antibodies against its own GnRH (Gonadotropin-releasing hormone). To do this, GnRH is synthesized and hooked to a foreign protein. This new material (called a conjugate because it is made up of two components) looks like a giant new molecule that the animal's immune system has never encountered. As a result, when the GnRH vaccine is injected into the animal's body, the body's immune response neutralizes the hormone's function, resulting in infertility in both males and females."

The $60,000 contraceptive study will be conducted by the U.S. Department of Agriculture's National Wildlife Research Center and Spay First, Steinberger's Oklahoma-based organization working to reduce dog overpopulation in chronically poor places around the world.

Belva Black Lance, a Rosebud Sioux community advocate who helps with the dog program, sings the regimens praises in the hopes that is something that can be continued on into the future. "The reservation is a better place. ... This is easier to explain in Lakota than in English, but dogs are a part of our lives. They have been in the past and they will be in the future. To be able to take care of them is so important," she said, via the Argus Leader. 

Animals have always played an important part of Indian history and culture according to Indian.org, as creatures were "revered as spirits, and although they were hunted and killed, their skins and hides were used as clothing and drums, their meat was never wasted, and their spirits lived on in the mind of the tribes." 

Other vaccines are commonly marked under several different brand names, but scientificially referred to as zinc gluconate neutralized with arginine, and injected directly into each testicle of an animal, which prohibits the production of sperm, decreasing the incidence of male hormonal behaviors.