Tejasvini Gupta, Dinesh Korjan, and Aravind Rajesh
Stray dog-human coexistence in educational institutions and housing areas is a recurring system problem. It is often framed through moments of crisis like barking at night, dogs chasing vehicles, or garbage prowling. Typical momentary resolution in such cases is relocation of dogs (Chhavi Mittal Official, 2024). But these incidents rarely exist in isolation. They emerge from repeated interaction between humans and the dogs.
This project focuses specifically on educational institutions and housing areas as they create frequent interactions between the same group of humans and stray dogs.
Residents and students encounter the same dogs near gates, garbage areas, parking lots, and play areas every day. This is contrary to markets or transient public spaces where interaction constantly changes and has moving variables, the patterns of which could be studied only over a longer period of time.
Part of what makes this problem particularly difficult is that the repetition and constant interactions should ideally create familiarity. On the contrary, without any base understanding between the two, this repetition reinforces fear, misunderstandings, territoriality and conflicts in coexistence. In most situations, it forms a loop where human anxiety shapes dog behaviour and dog behaviour shapes human reactions. Dogs have shared space with humans for millennia (Britannica, n.d.), and this dynamic is not unique to stray dogs. Donaldson and Kymlicka (2011) describe animals such as urban strays as “liminal”: neither fully domesticated nor wild, living within human settlements without being owned by, or fully separate from, human society. Framing stray dogs as a liminal population, rather than simply a nuisance to be relocated or a wild population to be ignored, is central to why this paper treats coexistence as an ongoing negotiation rather than a problem with a final fix.
The issue at hand also changes form continuously. A dog that is calm during the afternoon may become territorial at night. Feeding practices, garbage accumulation, mating cycles, unfamiliar humans, relocation or the arrival of new dogs can all alter interactions dramatically. The downside is therefore not simply about dogs or humans independently but about the conditions under which this coexistence occurs.
Our focus, then, has been on understanding where these conflicts build, how they reinforce themselves and where the shifts in behaviour, communication, infrastructure and awareness could interrupt these loops. Rather than treating stray dogs solely as a crisis to be removed (relocated or culled), the project attempts to understand coexistence as more than just ignorance rather than a harmonious co-living.
Keywords: Stray Dogs, Coexistence, Animal Behaviour, Human-Animal Interaction Educational Institutions, Housing Societies, Shared Space