Rajkot: It’s hard to miss the queer sight of plastic bottles filled with red or indigo coloured liquid placed on the vehicles and outside the houses of some posh localities in the city.Fed up of stray dog menace, residents have started trying this technique, which has been used in other cities, to ward off the canines. The stray dogs are not only giving the residents of these societies sleepless nights with continuous barking, but also damaging the cars, some of them luxurious ones.The fear of dog bites always looms, especially for morning walkers or those coming late in the night. They are also fed up of complaining about the menace to Rajkot Municipal Corporation (RMC).The liquid-filled bottles are seen in Rameshwar Chowk, Sakhiyanagar, Navyug, Gita Gurjari and Saurabh Society. Alpesh Chauhan, who runs pharmacy shop, said, “We mix food colour to make red liquid and indigo for blue. We have been using this technique for the past one month and it looks to be helping.”According to the residents, the dogs leave scratch marks and dents on the cars and also leave the bonnet filthy.Parag Tejura, a businessman living in Rameshwar Chowk, said, “Dogs climb the vehicles and then jump the wall of the bungalows to enter the house. They are spreading filth everywhere. We are using this bottles full of red water to scare them away.” Tejura said, “Some animal lovers often raise objection if we use sticks to shoo away the dogs. Residents are afraid to go outside during night time as the dogs chase them.”xStray dogs have bitten nearly 20,000 people in 2017-2018 alone.Tushar Gokani, another resident, said, “We are fed up of this dog menace. There have been instances of the dogs biting our our family members and guests too.”Similar technique of red liquid was used by residential societies of Vadodara two years ago but experts say this is not a sure-shot solution.RMC’s veterinary officer Dr. B R Jaksania said, “We have seen that some societies have started using red water to scare the dogs. Animals are allergic to red color and get furious. So they avoid going there.”Animal Birth Control Act-2001 civic body can’t relocate the dogs. Civic body captures them for sterilization and vaccination of rabies and releases them at the same place from where they are captured.

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