Two Bangladeshi Brothers Are Trying to Save This Dog From Extinction

Joton and Topon Rabidas have owned dogs since they were babies. For several generations their family has bred and nurtured Sarail hounds, which are named after the Bangladeshi border town of Sarail, in an effort to stave off the dog’s extinction.

There’s no official data on how many of the animals still exist, but according to Kaiser Tamiz Amin, an expert in Sarail hounds, they’re globally down to around 40 individuals.

But it wasn’t always like this. The dog is believed to have originally descended from English greyhounds and sighthounds, and they were briefly associated with wealth and power. Up until just a few decades ago the dogs were even prized for their hunting skills and employed by both the Bangladeshi military and police.

But not any more.

“Sarail hounds need regular exercise, roughly 5-6 hours a day, which is complicated in cities where there’s not much space to run,” explained Tamiz Amin, adding that the animals can’t be left unattended as they’re often quite aggressive. “The Sarail people were raising them as their tradition, but other people took them as a luxury. Then they gradually lost interest due to the complications involved.”

What he suggests is that it was only the rich who could really afford to feed them in the first place, and their numbers are dwindling as they now fall out of fashion.

Compounding their lack of cultural relevance is their price of upkeep. An estimated 30 percent of Bangladeshis live below the poverty line (less than $1.90 a day), meaning that rearing Sarail hounds is a luxury that most can’t afford. 

Joton and Topon own two male dogs, two female dogs, three purebreds and two mixed-breed puppies. Both brothers work as cobblers, and make between $3-$5 a day, which is a tight budget to feed themselves as well as their dogs.

To make the money stretch, the brothers sell puppies to customers in cities like Dhaka, Chittagong and Cumilla. Joton said their puppies have even found takers in India.   

“My elder brother sold four puppies last year for around $350 each. We sell the puppies when they turn three-months-old. But frankly, we do not have many puppies to sell each year,” said Topon.

Eight years ago, they sold six hounds to the Rapid Action Battalion (RAB), which is a Bangladeshi security force.

“They said they wanted to train our dogs, but they never came back to buy more. We do not know if our hounds integrated with their squad,” said Topon.

VICE World News reached out to RAB to find out how the dogs got along, only to hear they were a bit of a disaster.

“The dogs are no longer in the squad,” one of the RAB officials admitted on the condition of anonymity. “We tried to train them for a year in sniffing, but they were not effective. Finally we sold the hounds in auction.”

Perhaps this too illustrates why Sarail Hounds are facing extinction. They may have been once in vogue, but they’re just too aggressive and untrainable to be much use as service animals.

Despite this reality, the brothers remain committed to their cause. “For us, they are soulful beings and a fantastic design of God,” Topon said earnestly. “Just like our father advised us to follow the ancestor’s footstep, we also have asked our children to continue this tradition.”

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