I am a retired citizen of the USA who has called The Republic of Panama home for more than eight years. 

For those who may not know, Panama is a small country in Central America of less than 30,000 square miles (about the size of South Carolina), but due to the recent expansion of the Panama Canal, it is now one of the richest counties per capita in the world, and it grows richer and richer each year as more and more "super ships" (ships that could not fit through the old canal) now utilize the new expanded canal. 

However, despite all this wealth, literally thousands of stray dogs and puppies are left to die horrible deaths each year, mainly from starvation and disease, simply because the government of Panama has never developed a nationwide spay/neuter program that would dramatically curtail the number of stray dogs and puppies and thereby dramatically reduce the number of those that end up suffering and dying needlessly in this country every year.

Exacerbating this problem are certain cultural peculiarities that may be hard for outsiders to understand.  For example, many of the indigenous peoples of Panama do not provide the most basic requirements for the animals they keep, as they believe these animals must provide for themselves.  I'm talking about not only denying needed medical care, but also the denial of food, water, and shelter.  This means these animals are forced to fend for themselves, thereby causing them to raid chicken coops and/or kill other livestock just to subsist!   

Local farmers are then compelled to protect their chickens and livestock in any way they can, including shooting the dogs, or worse, leaving out poisoned meat the unsuspecting dogs then consume. These poisons cause grotesque deaths that actually come as a relief after the dogs have endured extremely painful stomach cramps, simultaneous vomiting and diarrhea, blindness, heart attacks, asphyxiation, and eventually coma and death.

I have witnessed all this suffering first hand, and as an animal lover it breaks my heart, but as someone living on a Social Security check, there is only so much I can do; I already use a large portion of my monthly benefit buying dog food, but the need just keeps growing! 

For example, when I found the dog pictured above nearly three weeks ago, she was literally skin and bones, and could barely move.  Only two of her eight puppies were still alive!  The others had all succumbed to her inability to produce sufficient quantities of milk for them since she, herself, was so severely malnourished!  Only after I began feeding the three of them did they begin to recover.  I wish I could say starvation was a rare occurrence, but unfortunately, it happens far more than I ever could have imagined before coming here. 

Something has to be done to alleviate all this suffering and death! We can't just keep feeding more and more stray dogs and their multiple litters of puppies who will then mature and have multiple litters of their own, thereby perpetuating the problem exponentially! 

The only real solution is for the government to initiate a nationwide free spay/neuter program that will allow existing dogs to live out their lives without producing multiple generations of offspring while preventing said multiple generations of offspring from suffering the horrendous fates so many of their ancestors have already suffered!  

Therefore we are asking President Juan Carlos Varela and the National Assembly to initiate a nationwide program similar to programs that already exist in local communities such as Boquete in Chiriqui, Panama, where the stray dog population has been brought under control so their streets are no longer littered with the bodies of dogs and puppies who never had to suffer and die as they did.

If action is not taken immediately, this carnage will continue, and it won't be only the dogs and puppies who suffer.  Rather, their rotting carcasses will create a dangerous situation for we humans since we can contract so many infectious diseases and sicknesses from these poor deceased animals!