Chilean Water Cannon and Stray Dogs

Source: blogs.reuters.com via Bordemundo on Pinterest

An interesting blogpost here for its photographs of Chilean street dogs and a water cannon being fired by riot police last year. I would love to know more about what was really going on and don’t quite swallow the blogger/photographer’s interpretation that the dogs were on the side of the protesters. It could be play, could be thirst, could be aggression. Unfortunately it’s a case of the photographs being ambiguous enough to allow a perhaps biased interpretation. Great pictures though.

Adopting Stray Dogs from Overseas

This CBS News story highlights a growing trend, particularly in the US, for adopting stray dogs from abroad. Holidaying in foreign lands often brings people into contact with many things with which they are unfamiliar and this includes unowned street dogs. The reaction is often one of wanting to help these animals and increasingly animal welfare groups in some countries are making it easier to do so by helping you to adopt a stray and take it home as a pet.

People’s reaction to street dogs is interesting in itself as dogs have a wonderful talent for eliciting pity from us. I suspect that this came about from their need to deflect human aggression whilst living as scavengers around human communities. Living close to people means encountering people. Neither fight nor flight would make much sense in that lifestyle but looking nonthreatening would be a good tactic. It’s then a short step from cowering and cringing to begging through looking helpless and pathetic. In some ways they are quite manipulative and have us in the palm of their paw but deserve respect for that. However, it certainly does also go further than this and many unowned dogs are genuinely in dire straits and need help from people perhaps due to being an abandoned ex-pet, for example.

Many people’s reaction to the adoption of stray dogs from overseas is to question the expense and ask whether the money couldn’t better be used in a different way. This is usually my first reaction as well but I do also have a lot of sympathy with the direct connection that people have made. Another viewpoint would be to pat the dog on the head and say, “well done dog, you caught them hook, line and sinker!”.

The thing that worries me is the assumption that all these dogs need to be saved in the first place. I’m sure many of them do but am equally sure that many actually have a better life than they pretend.

“Pothead” the Stray Dog

A stray dog in San Antonio has had an unusual problem for months (report and video here). Whilst foraging it somehow got a plastic flowerpot stuck around its neck and has been running around with it ever since. Looking like he’s wearing one of those protective collars fitted by vets after an operation, “Pothead” as he is now known, can still run around and apparently feed normally but there are fears for his long-term well-being. All efforts to catch and help the animal have so far failed.

Pet Abandonment will Swamp Efforts to Help Bangkok Stray Dogs

The Bangkok Post newspaper ran a feature about a woman, Phimpakarn Petpichetchien, and her struggle to improve the welfare of street dogs in Bangkok with the Soi Dog Foundation. Her group is aiming to sterilize and vaccinate 15 dogs a week and hoping to see tangible results within 10 years. She admits the group is small and therefore limited in what it can achieve but she also has the good idea of encouraging local community projects to get involved.

Unfortunately, the article does not mention the root cause of the problem, namely, the abandonment of pets. Figures reported in the media a few years ago indicated that an estimated 30,000 pet dogs were getting dumped on Bangkok’s streets every year. Since then the Bangkok Metropolitan Authority have enacted new ordinance laws to try to control dog owners, which does head towards the heart of the problem, but with a human population used to inefficient or even totally absent rule enforcement, I have seen no evidence to suggest that the rate of abandonment has slowed.

I commend this lady for her efforts to improve the lives of individual stray dogs but feel her efforts will be swamped unless a better way to leash the owners is found.

[Incidentally, I also like her appropriate surname, PETpichetCHIEN.]

Feeding Stray Dogs Not a Crime

A couple of years ago two people in Mumbai, India, were arrested, hand-cuffed and paraded around their housing community for the “crime” of feeding a stray dog who then bit somebody. According to the Mumbai Mirror, the charges have only just been dropped with the court declaring that “feeding stray dogs is not a crime”.

This fairly extreme case highlights growing tensions in Mumbai communities over how to deal with strays with a vociferous majority arguing against feeding them on the grounds that it will result in an increased population. For many housing societies the aim is dog-free streets and people who dare to feed them face fines and victimisation.

It seems that the traditional village dog does not sit comfortably in modern urban India even though some people still readily accept them. I suspect that this is also the general trend in many other cities and I just hope that the attitude does not spread to more rural areas where the traditional relationship between people and unowned village dogs remains intact.

This particular case of the breakdown of the human-village dog relationship perhaps suggests an even more serious social breakdown whereby a relatively minor dispute requires the involvement of the police followed by humiliation of the “offenders” and then the courts. 

Stray Dog Song

The first song I've come across about stray dogs and not a bad advert for adopting street dogs rather than buying purebreeds.