Welcome to the new website of the Animal Rehabilitation Initiative (Association Incorporated Under Section 21). We are a not-for-profit company whose stated purpose at the outset in 2000 was to utilise the behavioural expertise and resources we had available to assist in alleviating the ‘pet overpopulation’ problem in South Africa. Both in order to prevent pet animals being relinquished into the welfare system, and to better deal with those that were already there. Since then our understanding of the problem, and therefore our focus, has appreciably broadened.

A few years ago I wrote an article (still unpublished) entitled “The Beast Within”, which was designed to remind people of the intrinsic ‘animal nature’ of their pets. This includes both those environmental needs that must be met, as well as understanding that when this very humanised creature doesn’t do what we expect them to do, it’s because of our lack of knowledge about them, not them being bad. “The Beast Without” expands this theme, but addresses instead those animals that live ‘outside’ the boundaries we erect to contain our pets. It also talks about those ‘beasts’ that live ‘without’ the lavish resources available to most pets. Welcome to The Beast Without.

The way that ‘pet-overpopulation’ or ‘homelessness’ is traditionally understood comes out of a specific set of circumstances that exist in the Developed World, where the Animal Welfare industry arose. In these countries, animals living on the streets, parks and industrial sites are generally strayed pets, or the offspring of strays. So there the problem is one of dealing with pet animals that have become dislocated and lost. Or ones that have been abandoned.

The situation in the Developing World, including South Africa, is a very different one, where the overwhelming majority of free-ranging animals living in countryside villages and towns, in and around the urban slums and poorer neighbourhoods of our cities are not ‘pets’ in the way most suburban people understand the term. As far as dogs are concerned, this is exactly the way most members of the species live around the world; it accounts for the vast majority of the species’ demographic distribution worldwide. Cats are only semi-domesticated, and can survive without human assistance at all if needs be, although they generally derive significant benefits from living close to humans.

So perhaps it is time that we re-evaluate the nature of the “problem”, and the nature of our response. The Animal Rehabilitation Initiative suggests that there is a great deal of very useful information to be had from Behavioural Ecology that may provide useful guidelines about how best to deal with these issues in a manner that is more sensitive to the circumstances of both the animals and the humans around whom they live. At the very least, perhaps this should form part of any discussion about how best to frame our intervention and management. A robust discussion certainly seems long overdue.