Almost a month ago, while on a random evening stroll, I was bitten by a stray dog. There was no warning to it, no growling, no chasing down the street. The dog had been lying under a parked car, probably sheltering from the afternoon heat, when it just suddenly lunged. The encounter lasted a couple of seconds, and I luckily walked away with bruises and a deep canine puncture in my calf. I got vaccinated immediately, and the wound has since healed. However, what has not healed as easily is the instinct that followed. Now when a stray dog passes too close, I notice, and I slow down. Imagine learning that kind of caution at seven. A child playing cricket outside his house should not grow up reading the posture of every dog on the street.

Punjab has recorded more than 1.3 million dog-bite incidents over the last five years. Rabies makes this number frightening on its own. Described as endemic in Pakistan, it is responsible for the death of 2,000 to 5,000 people annually. Yet even that range carries a familiar Pakistani twist. The government itself admits that comprehensive national data on human rabies simply does not exist.

Yet our public debate keeps starting at the wrong end. It swings between two positions. Cull the animals altogether or tolerate them in the name of compassion. Both ask the same wrong question. What should happen after a street has already turned unsafe; usually in the outrage that follows an attack. Almost nobody asks why and how our cities sustain such large free-roaming populations in the first........

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