The Necessity of the Stray
The phrase “necessity is the mother of invention” is one we often hear. At first glance, it may seem self-evident, yet it encapsulates a crucial aspect of the trajectory of human progress. Humans rarely begin searching for solutions until reality becomes unacceptable, or a problem grows so large that it can no longer be ignored. When a problem is small, it is easy to sidestep: we add a procedure here, establish a committee there, and resort to a temporary fix that allows operations to continue, leading us to believe the system is functioning properly—until exceptional pressure exposes its weaknesses. This is precisely what we witnessed during the coronavirus pandemic. Remote work, digital services, and e-learning were not new; they already existed. However, urgent necessity accelerated their adoption, achieving in weeks what would have taken years.
Today, we are living through a vivid example. Warnings about the phenomenon of stray dogs have escalated following a series of incidents that have reached the point of claiming innocent lives and causing severe injuries to others. A phenomenon of this magnitude rarely emerges overnight. It may be partly attributable to some owners abandoning their pets, and dogs may have found in waste and discarded materials the means to survive and reproduce. There may be other reasons that only become clear through observation and studies. Most likely, the problem was quietly taking shape while we sidestepped it with piecemeal interventions, until recent incidents revealed its true scale.
Ironically, the solution was not absent; it lacked only the impetus for adoption. Imagine a national digital system that registers every animal under human care and links it to an electronic identifier via a radio-frequency identification (RFID) chip implanted under the skin. A field team could then determine, with a single scan, whether an animal is owned, previously vaccinated, or sterilized, making abandonment a violation of a known owner’s record. These data would feed into a shared cloud platform operated by all relevant authorities, rather than remaining scattered across separate records.
Geographic Information Systems (GIS) would then add another dimension, transforming a citizen’s report from a phone call that closes after being handled into a data point with precise coordinates and a specific timestamp. As thousands of points accumulate, the picture becomes clear: we can identify where cases concentrate and recur, and assess their connection to potential causes. The map thus shifts from a tool for displaying the problem to a tool for decision-making and addressing root causes. Over time, advanced analytics and artificial intelligence can help predict areas most vulnerable to population growth, enabling proactive vaccination, sterilization, and sheltering campaigns, with their impact measured quantitatively.
Crucially, these technologies are not futuristic or experimental; they are mature tools used daily across various sectors. The real challenge is integrating them into a single system that begins with a clear problem and ends with better decisions. What works for stray dogs may also apply to other issues requiring spatial monitoring and coordination among multiple agencies.
Large problems, however harsh, offer us the opportunity to see what was previously hidden from our view and to transform temporary fixes into sustainable solutions. Real change does not always begin with a grand project or a technology searching for a problem; it starts with a genuine problem we place before us, followed by the deployment of our available data and technologies to understand and manage it more effectively. Necessity does not only create inventions; it also points to what needs repair. The solutions were within our grasp; what we sometimes lacked was the clarity to see the need—however stray it may appear.
Dr. Dhafer Adel Al-Huwail
