Stray Dogs Howling Football

Here is an excellent piece of creative promotion for the cause of stray dogs currently being “cleaned” from Ukrainian streets prior to the Euro 2012 football championships.

Stray Dogs’ Role in Early Medical Science

This post on The Chirurgeon’s Apprentice website is not pleasant reading, giving details of how stray dogs were used as human proxies to study physiology in England before the days of anesthetics. As readily available subjects, dogs would often be strapped or nailed to a table and cut open to reveal the inner workings of the still living animal both as teaching aids to allow student surgeons to hone their skills and as scientific test subjects.

Some of these early vivisectionists, such as Robert Hooke, did occasionally show remorse for the suffering they caused whilst others in society were openly critical of “these barbarities”. To me, this illustrates the fact that perhaps more than in any other animal stray dogs stimulate a dichotomy of attitudes in us from callousness on one hand to pity on the other. 

Stray Dog Shows its Worth

The story of a stray dog alerting guards to the attempted escape via a tunnel of three inmates from a prison in Paraguay has received a lot of media attention (Washington Post for example). The quote from one of the prisoners that when he reached the street and stuck his head out of the escape tunnel just before dawn “the stupid dog barked” seems particularly popular.

The story doesn’t really need me to re-post it except to point out that this sentinel role of dogs is an ancient benefit of having these animals around that possibly pre-dates domestication. It is also a benefit that many people around the world enjoy from unowned village dogs and strays. These community security alerts may at times be annoying with their readiness to bark but they are a definitive deterrent to burglars for whom the dog’s bark IS actually worse than its bite. It is also a service that comes with little or no cost to home-owners but I feel is sadly undervalued.

Moscow Stray Dog Commemoration Anniversary

Photograph by A. Savin

Today is the 5th anniversary of the unveiling of the bronze statue above.

Malchik was a stray dog who lived at an underground railway station in Moscow. One winter evening, a 22-year-old woman was passing through the station with her pet Staffordshire Bull Terrier when Malchik barked at them. The woman removed a kitchen knife from her purse and killed Malchick by stabbing him six times. The woman was arrested, tried, and underwent one year of psychiatric treatment.

Following public outrage over the incident, money was raised and this bronze statue made which now sits in Mendeleyevskaya station.


As far as I know this is the only public statue dedicated to an unowned stray dog.

Comparing the Lives of Stray Dogs and Pets

I took these two photographs at around the same time in Chiang Mai in Thailand. Of course, neither truly represents the vast diversity found in either pets or stray dogs and they were deliberately selected to make a point but nevertheless to me they make a striking comparison.

The dressed-up dog strapped into an unnatural position in a radio-controlled car is collecting money for “abandoned friends” (but there is no indication as to how these ex-pets would be helped or by whom). This animal is a pet dog.

The other photograph shows a dog at a nearby temple. It is unowned and quite possibly one of the “abandoned friends” the car-driver wants to help. This is a stray dog.

Which one has the better life? I am not a dog so I don’t know the answer. Maybe I caught the pet at a bad moment in it’s life and the stray at a good moment. Perhaps the pet is allowed to be a dog for the rest of the time or even actually enjoys being forced to act as a little person. Perhaps the stray that leads a life of apparent leisure and decides its own activities with others of its own kind actually struggles to find enough food and suffers from internal parasites. Perhaps.

The question is clouded by the fact that we use our own values to judge dogs and our own values have become increasingly separated from the natural world towards artificial comforts and security. I see more and more toy dogs being carried everywhere, dressed-up like children and fluffed-up with cosmetics but however clean, pampered and safe they are I feel sorry for them far more than many of the strays wandering the streets.

I’m sure a great many pet dogs lead great lives but I wish all pet owners would genuinely try to see things from their pet’s point of view and recognise the fact that their dog is a dog not a furry person. Using a pet to satisfy your needs whilst ignoring its own does not seem loving to me. 

Making the Link between Garbage and Stray Dogs

This story in The Times of India reported on the two most significant problems facing residents of Gandharvanagri, namely, roadside garbage and stray dogs. The persistent garbage problem is mainly blamed on inadequate collection but there is also a slight hint of recognition that residents’ behavior is playing a role. The stray dog problem is blamed squarely on the inadequacies of sterilization efforts.

Strangely, there is no indication in this report that anybody has made a connection between the rubbish and the dogs. Experience elsewhere has shown a clear link between the two as perfectly illustrated years ago in another Indian city, Surat, where they successfully reduced the number of stray dogs but failed to tackle the underlying problem of poor waste management. The result was an exploding population of rats.

Wherever stray dog populations reach the level where people perceive them to be a serious problem it is likely that one of the best solutions is to improve waste management.