eBook about stray dogs now on sale

My ebook about stray dogs, “A Stray View”, is now on sale at Bangkok Books.

After living in Bangkok and coming across stray dogs daily for several years I began to look at them through the eyes of a naturalist and tried to understand their lifestyle and behavior from a more neutral point of view than the generally fairly entrenched “savers” and “shooters”. I quickly started to sense that the reality of life on the streets for dogs was very variable according to their particular living situation and especially their individual backgrounds. How dogs reacted to people, for example, was clearly not always consistent and I wondered why. I also started to realise that unowned “stray” dogs were often being blamed for problems actually caused by pet dogs and their irresponsible owners.

“A Stray View” is a descriptive and photographic portrait of dogs on Bangkok’s streets plus an assessment of the stray dog issue including the nature, causes and management of the problems. I also question the attitude that dog’s have no role as free-living, unowned animals.

The following text is an extract (the Introduction) from “A Stray View”:

“Bangkok has a stray dog problem, in 2004 there were an estimated 130,000 unowned dogs wandering the city's streets, and despite efforts to control them this number according to some reports steadily increases by about 10% a year. They are an eyesore, a disease risk, a danger to traffic, a noise-polluting messy nuisance, and at times an intimidating threat. Bites are common, rabies still a reality, and the city has gained an unwanted but prominent feature to rival traffic jams in the memory of visitors. Hardly an endearing picture of "man's best friend".

Occasionally the problem is horrific such as the case of a boy fortunate to escape with his life after getting savagely mauled by a large group of dogs. Or the Sunday morning in September 2001 when a rabid dog bit 52 people in a popular Bangkok park before eventually getting beaten to death by a security guard. At other times its seriousness is tinged with farce such as the barking dogs that sent a female elephant into an uncontrolled two hour jog through the busy streets. Everybody agrees that something needs to be done, and things are being done, but the stray dog problem is far from being solved.

However, another viewpoint would say that it is the stray dogs that have the problem. They have been pushed back onto the edge of our society from where they came, and from here they face ill-health, hunger, hard-hitting traffic and intimidation from kicking, stone-throwing humans. The ties that have bonded us for 10,000 years or more are welt-knotted, and this position of "outcast friend" is often an uncomfortable one for both sides.

These are the two commonest attitudes; either that strays need "controlling" or "saving", but there is yet another angle which sees that many stray dogs arguably lead quite a good life and do not cause any significant trouble. This might sound strange to people living in clean, modern societies where any unowned dog looks out of place, but worldwide many strays are just a normal, unobtrusive part of the urban (or at least village) background. A closer look actually points to pets often being a larger part of the problem than unowned dogs.

Combining, or perhaps juggling, these three attitudes according to the situation will usually give the most balanced stance, but whichever angle is taken this is still not the full story as there are many close ties between stray dogs and people where both sides benefit. The fact is that some people like having these animals around, and this is a point perhaps too easily ignored.

There will always be dogs in our cities, and even if the only ones left are pets, people will still get bitten, other health risks will still remain, and no doubt there will still be annoying unstoppable barkers amongst them. The dog problem will never totally go away as long as people have a desire to keep the human-dog relationship going, and personally I cannot imagine a dogless society. However, the chances are that for many years to come cities like Bangkok will still have dogs on the streets, perhaps just pets on the loose, but more likely some unowned strays as well. They are part of the urban environment, they are here to stay, and the task is managing them.

In many situations the practicalities of dealing with thousands of free-running dogs suggest that the pragmatic aim should be to reduce the problem not eliminate it. This is certainly true in Buddhist Thailand where a reluctance to resort to euthanasia cuts down the options. In each different urban situation the authorities together with the wider public have to decide on the exact target of stray management, whether dog-free streets or perhaps some more acceptable number of canine wanderers with a healthcare plan.

One possible exception to the reduce-rather-than-eliminate strategy is rabies, which is incurable, fatal and most commonly passed to people via dogs. Large strides have been made to lessen the impact of this disease in Thailand and its virtually eradication as a cause of fatalities is just about conceivable.

Managing the dog problem to a large degree means managing people, and here we have to accept responsibility for creating the headache in the first place. We also have to accept that even if we are able to make significant improvements, the problems will just bloom again if there is no commitment to ongoing management.

But before looking at how to tackle strays it is worth getting to know our urban dogs a little better...”




Note: this ebook is available in a variety of formats including .pdf, mobi and epub.

An encounter with the dogs' nature

Natural dogs I call them. Perhaps not this pack exactly as these individuals have probably taken a circuitious route through generations of our peculiar whims only to be tossed back out by the callousness of abandonment. For many this is a horror of unknowns and wildfire mange, but others manage to find their roots from way back before domestication. Some even find their ancestors. But by that I do not mean wolves, there is something inbetween, and that is the natural dog, pre-domestication.

I have a theory and am about to test it. About 20 dogs live on this patch of wasteground on the outskirts of Bangkok. I have watched them through binoculars from a multistorey carpark, which may seem like a naturalist’s desparation in a barren metropolis but to me it feels as if I’m looking at something strikingly new that touches our relationship with nature quite deeply.  These dogs are unowned and live what looks like a moderately tough life of scavenging and dodging. It is night, stuffily warm, distant street-lights provide a few candles-worth of orange gloom and a nearby motorway provides a muffled background hum. I have no torch and am going to walk through the area where I know this pack of mongrels is lying up. Walk with me, I dare you.

But first look over to the left at the mid-distance homes of wealth and barriered gardens. Imagine jumping over one of those walls at night and meeting the canine residents. Rottweilers or poodles, they would not be wagging their tails when they come to greet you. Still want to come with me?

Good. We walk slowly to allow our feet to feel the way. After a dozen or so careful steps we first become aware of shadowy forms, gone if we try to look directly. As we edge forwards they seem to circle from infront to behind like a ship’s wake. Eventually our eyes start to pick out more detail and confirm that we have dogs on all sides. Silent dogs, so silent. This is what we will remember more than anything.

Suddenly one bolts from under our feet and breaks that silence having been woken from a slumber too deep or a dream too captivating to notice our approach. Looking alternately back over each shoulder it scampers away. On realising that the problem is no more than two humans the barking stops and it slinks with its companions. It gave four brief barks, that’s all; barks so fitting the situation and, dare I say, so natural. Then we are through and the silent pack closes in behind us, but not threateningly, they just want to go back to sleep.

Why didn’t they bark properly or snarl or bite? That’s what such curs should do, isn’t it? The answer, I believe, lies in what we are to them.

My theory is that socialised pet dogs are the problem dogs, the ones that see a person as a social threat so act aggressively. Free-living dogs see us as we are, a different animal not a psuedo-dog, hence the avoidance rather than confrontation. The theory that when we started to settle down and grow into communities some wolves, which are basically undomesticable in themselves, filled a scavenging niche and evolved into a dingo-like animal which was more ripe for domestication, is not mine. But looking at the free-ranging village dogs so prevalent around the tropics it makes so much sense.

But surely the dog is not a natural animal, it’s man-made. That’s the point. That’s hitting the nail on the head. The nail that always so firmly pins the dog to our egos and arrogant assumptions. We walked through that pack of pariahs at night and saw the real nature in the dog. Our dogs, the very ones that we dumped because of the nature of us. They had reverted and that makes me so happy.

Look beyond the pitiful abandoned dogs so poorly prepared for freedom, the ones that do not manage the leap back to their past, and you can see the generations of lower-latitude independent dogs perfectly designed for a role on the edge of our society; unowned and free, deserving of our respect and as natural as the sparrows that similarly share our space.

I dared you to come with me physically now I dare you to join me in spirit.

Look at your own pet dog. Ask it who did the adapting, them or us. It will wag its tail and give the perfect reply that the answer is whatever you want it be, sir. The wild creature is still there but so beautifully camouflaged that we assume that we made it ourselves. We didn’t, nature made the dog, we just did the breeds. 

Introducing Mee the "stray" dog

Mee is Thai for “bear” and he is one of the most pleasant dogs I have ever met.

The fact that he has a name suggests that he is a pet but to a casual observer his lifestyle would probably indicate otherwise. He spends all of his time on the street outside our house in Chiang Mai in northern Thailand. The family opposite us look after him, providing some food, company and shelter from rain in a covered area at the front of their home, and if he has owners it is these neighbours of ours. We also give him and his companion some leftovers occasionally and enjoy his calm, genial greeting whenever we go out.  

I have no idea whether his genes contain any ‘breeds’ and I just describe him as a distinctive mongrel. Some might argue that he has something of the look, if not the typical coloring, of a “Bang Khaew” from northern Thailand, and they may well be right.

There are a few other dogs sharing his lifestyle in our area and also several dogs that are more obviously pets that are allowed to wander around the street occasionally. They all know each other and socialize whenever they get the chance, with tensions and rare fights only occurring when dogs from other areas get too close.

The only time I ever see Mee barking is when unfamiliar dogs wander along. I have never seen him bark at a person (although, he might be doing it at night as far as I know) and I have never seen him show any aggressive intentions towards people. He ignores the chickens that wander around the roadside and is happy to play with the local kids. He also enjoys the chance to explore our garden if we leave the gate open.

The pet dogs that are allowed to wander the street part of the time (and I’m sure Mee counts amongst his closest friends) are behaviorally quite different. Even on our first meeting Mee was relaxed and friendly but the pets at first approached me quite aggressively. It took several encounters before they started to ignore me and we are still not on particularly friendly terms. I have also seen them challenge other people quite nastily. To me it is a little sad that a stranger who gets confronted by these pets on the loose would call them strays and lump Mee into the same category even though at the time of the encounter Mee was probably just sitting there watching.

Then there are the half a dozen dogs just down the road, which all look like they came from the same litter, that are never allowed out onto the street. They are real pets that live day and night in their owner’s garden. Even over two years after first barking at me they still do whenever I (or anybody else) walks passed their gate. Six dogs barking like this ensures the owner is safe from burglars but as you can imagine the noise pollution is significant. Again, Mee just sits there watching these neurotic dogs in their barking frenzy and probably wonders what on earth is wrong with them.

In spite of his close connections to people Mee is undoubtedly a street dog who decides his own movements and activities, and I’m sure many people would call him a stray rather than a pet. But this tag has negative connotations and he seems so suited to his lifestyle that I cannot think from what he has supposedly “strayed”. I prefer to just call him a dog being a dog.

Mee is not a problem to anybody, in any way. The local pet dogs, on the other hand, are.