Dogs in China Saved from Meat Trade

This is a story about the struggle between the modern and the traditional in China. In eastern China’s Jiangsu Province some young animal lovers stopped a truck crammed full of dogs destined for the meat market. After many hours of negotiation they successful obtained the dogs’ release but had to pay a considerable amount of money to buy the animals from the trader.

They admit that this method is not a sustainable solution to what many are coming to perceive as an immoral practice whilst many others still support the trade and consume the meat. The law is on the side of the latter.

Without the western influence promoting the relatively new attitude to dogs as coveted pets perhaps it may have been possible for Chinese society to effect a more gradual process for changing the dog meat trade. By that I mean first aiming to improve the often very cruel practices, such as the transportation conditions highlighted in this story, whilst still accepting the desire and right of many to consume dog meat. However, the new generation of urban Chinese seem to have jumped over to the western viewpoint in a single leap whereby any consumption of dogs is wrong even if humanely farmed. Thereby, the chances are that this struggle will be a long one and probably increasingly acrimonious.

As the modern urban class where most of the power and influence lies, the dog lovers should eventually win this battle but probably not in my lifetime.

“Biblical” Dog in Trouble

An article in The Washington Post highlights the plight of Israel’s ancient dog “breed”, the Canaan, which is struggling to hang on due to rabies eradication programs, loss of habitat (meaning a change in human lifestyle) and cross-breeding.

There are a mere few hundred estimated to be left in Israel’s wilderness mainly living on the edge of Bedouin camps. However, across the world there are 2-3,000 Canaan dogs being kept as pets. Myrna Shiboleth, who runs Sha’ar Hagai Kennels in Israel, is the one breeder trying to bring fresh blood into the breeding program by getting new dogs from the wild or encouraging the wild Canaans to mate with her stock but she is finding it harder and harder to find any wild ones.

The Canaan’s recognition as a breed only began in the 1930s when a visiting Austrian biologist used them to train as guard dogs for Jewish settlements. However, it’s history as a pariah dog goes back a long way with it being recognized in “1st-century rock carvings in the Sinai” and “skeletons of more than 700 dogs from the 5th century B.C. discovered south of Tel Aviv”. It is also suggested that references to dogs in the bible must have been referring to the Canaan.

Therefore, it actually seems wrong to me to call the Canaan a breed at all. The above article (and elsewhere) is littered with terms that identify the Canaan as a middle-eastern village dog or pariah. Not everyone will agree with this but to me it seems highly probable that it did not come into being through direct human selection as with other breeds but as a consequence of scavenging around human communities as with dogs such as the south-east Asian dingo, and as such is not strictly a “breed”.  To me, the only way to save the Canaan is conserve it in situ because it’s lifestyle is as much a part of it as it’s physical characteristics are but this is particularly difficult in Israel’s restricted space.

The Canaan is Israel’s national dog, which makes my next suggestion difficult, but the remaining wild Canaans are not restricted to political boundaries and looking further afield in neighboring countries would undoubtedly reveal a larger wild population.

It is almost as if we now have two Canaans: the breed dog being kept as pets and the free-ranging original version. An alternative, and to me preferable, approach would be to say that the Canaan is an Israeli breed bred from the middle-eastern pariah dog, and not to use the label at all for the dogs still living the pariah lifestyle.

There is much good, although inconclusive, evidence that dog domestication first occurred in the middle-east, so perhaps an incentive to focus efforts on conserving the free-ranging “Canaan” dogs would be the possibility that these animals represent not only the biblical dog but also the closest relatives we have to the original dogs. 

The Great Indian Dog Show

The Deccan Chronicle has a report about an interesting dog event to be held on 15^th April called “The Great Indian Dog Show”. Its aim is to promote native Indian dogs and mongrels, and to encourage people to adopt strays rather than spend money on pure breeds. In place of the normal breed categories there will be unusual competition categories such as “the waggiest tail” and “the dog that most resembles its owner”. They hope to highlight how mixed breeds and local pariah dogs can make wonderful pets and generally do not suffer inherited genetic ailments like many breeds do.

In the report, one of the organizers also picks up on how free-ranging dogs’ behavior can reflect the treatment they receive from people: “It is a misconception that Indian dogs are dangerous. You always see people hitting them with stones and sticks, so you see why they have learned to be defensive and to bite when provoked.” I certainly believe human aggression has a significant influence on dog aggressive and mentioned it earlier in relation to dog bites in Kashmir (here).

Although I like the idea of this dog show and share the feeling that mongrels have a lot going for them as pets, the one point I disagree with is their “dream” of stray-free streets. It does partly depend on how they are defining a stray but it sounds like they are dreaming of no unowned dogs on their streets at all which to me means no pariah dogs. Pariah dogs are the native Indian village dogs that have lived unowned around people for thousands of years. It would be a mistake to just look at them as outcast mongrels and I really hope they do not turn the Indian pariah dog into just another breed. To me that’s more like a nightmare.

Pregnancy from Dog Bites?

If bitten by a stray dog in many parts of the world it is very advisable to get a rabies jab. In some parts of rural India it is also sensible to see the local faith-healer or otherwise risk having puppies grow inside you. As reported here there is a persistent local belief that dog bites can lead to a person getting pregnant with puppies followed by madness and death.

I do not know the roots of the belief (and have not seen an article published in The Lancet in 2003, unavailable on-line, that apparently covers the phenomenon) but it seems quite possible that this “puppy pregnancy syndrome” may have originated from rabies and acts as a mechanism to encourage people to avoid getting bitten by dogs.

Turkey’s Stray Dogs To Get Better Protection

Turkey’s political parties have pledged unanimous support for a bill to place animal abuse under the Turkish Penal Code (reported here). At present any such cases are treated as mere misdemeanors and offenders normally given a small fine. This reclassification of animal cruelty could mean punishments of 3-year jail terms and should act as a better deterrent.

At present, cruelty to somebody else’s pet does actually already risk harder punishment but because the owner suffered (financial and property loss) not because the animal suffered.

This change is most notably relevant to stray dogs which, as elsewhere in the world, are particularly vulnerable to cruelty and often bear the brunt of misdirected human aggression. It should also deter some of the cruel current measures used by some municipalities to deal with their stray dog populations through, for example, poisoning.

As I wrote in an earlier blog about Istanbul, Turkey has an interesting but chequered historical relationship with its unowned dogs. A quote in the above article touches on this theme: “Historically, Turkey doesn’t have a history of mistreating animals but, ironically, efforts to modernize Turkey came hand-in-hand with the implementation of draconian methods to attempt to control animal populations.”

Leopards, Stray Dogs and Rubbish

If you are concerned about the risks of having leopards living close to your community then, according to a research project in Sanjay Gandhi National Park just north of Mumbai in India, the answer might be to manage your domestic waste more efficiently. They have found that the accumulations of waste attract and support stray dogs which in turn attract leopards who find the dogs relatively easy prey so stick around where they are more likely to come into conflict with people.

Now I am just waiting to hear somebody suggest that leopards are a good way to control stray dogs.

Researchers on their African Village Dog Study

Just to follow-up on the African village dog study I wrote about on 21st March, here are the Boyko brothers with their own explanation of their aims.

Trailer for “Street Dogs of South Central” Dramamentary

This is a trailer for a documentary about street dogs in Los Angeles that follows the lives of one particular dog and her puppies over a three-year period (reported here). It aired on Animal Planet in February but I only just heard about it so haven’t seen the full version.

Although it is clearly edited for drama and has been called a "dramamentary" it is aimed at raising "some awareness for the plight of stray dogs" and probably contains interesting detail. For example, one of the film-makers felt there was covert ownership by people who would feed a stray but could not afford medical care or a license so would not admit to actually owning the dog which was therefore allowed to run around freely.

The makers of the film are not entirely happy with Animal Planet’s re-editing and are showing their own original version at a festival in Hollywood. On-line reaction has included some anger at the film-makers for not intervening to help the dogs and this wildlife film-making approach of theirs used on our beloved dogs-in-need is clearly a touchy subject for many. However, if they had intervened they would have ended-up with another documentary about “saving” strays and not the more original film that they have managed to produce.

My biggest concern with this program is that it shows the western context of a city in the USA (the makers say they could have made it in any US city) which will tell only part of the worldwide stray dog story but will be shown worldwide. It worries me slightly that the film will effectively just add to the westernization of attitudes to unowned dogs that I have complained about before in this blog (see here and here, for example).

The answer to this is that somebody should make another version following unowned village dogs, for example, in Thailand. Perhaps I will, and I’m sure it would actually be an even more interesting story but it would also be less dramatic and therefore probably less viewed.

National Geographic Report on African Village Dog Study

National Geography has published a short article (here) reporting results of research on African village dog genetics.

I am very happy that they headed the article with,

“Dog breeds were created by human beings. The village dog created itself.”

They point out that the commonest breed in the world is the “no breed at all” village dog, and call them ‘The Forever Dog’.

An extract from the article:

“…most of the village dogs turned out to be as closely related to wolves as they were to fully domesticated dogs. Rather than being mixed-breed mutts that had gone feral in historical times, the village dogs had been eking out an existence on the human fringe for millennia. Their genomes thus reflected a state of early domestication, before artificial selection and inbreeding directed by humans had taken over. "When you are looking at village dogs," Adam Boyko says, "you have something more akin to natural selection, albeit in an environment that's managed by humans.""

The study also pointed to Middle Eastern wolves as the originators of these African dogs (but not necessarily of all dogs).

The Boyko research team are also now seeking funding to do a more intense study of African village dog genetics, which is good to see as most studies looking at dog genetics in the search for a better understanding of their roots focus on sampling a selection of breeds rather than village dogs. It’s perhaps a shame that the Indian pariah dogs and south-east Asian dingoes/village dogs aren’t included in this proposed study as that would give a much fuller picture but it is a definite step in the right direction.

I had never seen a research project seeking funding from the general public before until I came across their proposal at the Petridish website. If the subject interests you, you can now directly help through pledging a donation.

Aggressive Kashmiri Stray Dogs and Garbage

Almost everyday there are stories in the news about the stray dog problem in India with particular focus on the Kashmir valley where there seems to be an above average incidence of attacks on people. This could just be a reporting bias of a currently popular topic but I have often wondered why there is such an apparent contrast between this situation and my own experience of free-ranging dogs in Thailand where any friction between people and dogs is usually comparatively minor and often caused by pets rather than street dogs.

An article about the dog problem in Srinagar city in the Kashmir valley on Radio Netherlands Worldwide doesn’t actually answer this question but does give some interesting background and shines a blinding light on their particular problem with this single comment:

“The canine growth is helped along by the protein rich diet to be found in the 360 metric tons of garbage left on the streets by the primarily meat eating Kashmiris.”

Unfortunately, the article fails to take its own bait and carries on to discuss solving the problem through dog management without mention of the need for better waste management.

It is hard to say how aggressiveness towards people fits in but here are some thoughts of mine.

All the photographs published in these stories show packs of placid dogs living calmly next to people suggesting that most of the time they are not a problem. If the apparent aggressiveness is real then what is it that triggers it? Unfortunately, news reports rarely give enough detail to judge this.

The fact that they seem to be living in good-sized packs may play a role as facilitated aggression is a common mechanism for a situation to spiral out of control. This is where one dog reacting to a person triggers others to do the same, which often makes the person behave in a way that unwittingly provokes the dogs further (staring directly at them or moving away quickly, for example). In effect the dogs wind each other up which causes panic in the person which triggers a stronger reaction in the dogs, often ending up with the person running away with the dogs giving chase – a race that the dogs will win. This is more likely to happen with a denser population of dogs on the street.

Another factor could be the general treatment of dogs by the human population. In Thailand, as everywhere, there is some aggressive and callous treatment of street dogs but by far the overwhelming attitude is acceptance, with some positive interaction and most people just ignoring the animals. Thereby, most of the time the dogs do not see people as a threat so do not act aggressively towards them. This situation is confused by abandoned pets but in effect, Thailand’s easy-going, laid-back culture rubs off on the dogs. However, if people in a certain place have a more aggressive attitude towards the dogs with more common stone-throwing, kicking and stick-bashing then the dogs will be more likely to perceive a potential threat from people and react aggressively towards them. Again, I have no information to judge whether this is actually the case in Kashmir.

The role of pets-on-the-loose, the history of abandonment versus street-born dogs and the nature of how owned dogs are used in the area are all relevant aspects untouched on in newspaper reports. For example, a street dog population largely made up of abandoned ex-guard dogs would have a very different attitude towards people than a population of village dogs who have lived on the streets for generations.

Better waste disposal is part of the answer but to really understand and thereby solve this problem far more information is needed than the typically shallow, reactionary press reports we usually get.

Baboons NOT Kidnapping Stray Dogs to Raise as Pets

This 3-minute video clip of baboons and stray dogs from “Animals Like Us” has had over 400,000 views on YouTube. It claims to show how adult male baboons “kidnap” puppies which are then brought up as pets. And this is the story being passed around the web.

The place in question is the Ta’if rubbish dump in Saudi Arabia where both baboons and dogs scavenge from the refuse. Unfortunately, this clip has been extracted from a longer program which might shed more light on what is happening but to me it looks like careful editing to make a story that fits the aim of the program i.e. finding instances of animal behavior more typically associated with humans.

Despite the claims made, to my eye, this video does NOT show baboons kidnapping puppies to raise as pets. More realistically it shows an inquisitive male baboon investigating the puppy before eventually getting bored and wandering off plus the fact that the baboons and dogs live in very close proximity with interaction between the two. As one canine ethologist put it “…Baboons and dogs share the same environment, and they are socially plastic…” but jumping to the conclusion of kidnapping for pet-raising is a leap too far.

I have seen young macaque monkeys in Thailand “grooming” stray dogs for the edible fleas they harbor, which has similarities to what was happening at the end of the Ta’if clip but was clearly not a social bond.

There is something interesting going on at Ta’if and maybe there are parallels with the human/dog story but I find the anthropocentric claims of the program makers unfortunately distracting and misleading.

The Stray Dog Menace Moves up a Gear

A new angle on the old excuse for not having done your homework, “Sorry officer, a dog ate my license plate”.

Street Dogs Only Interested in Other Dogs

This time-lapse video I made of a Thai street dog taking it easy has an interesting ending where a bark triggers it to jump up and run across the road with all its friends. But what triggers the bark? There's a lot of activity in this area, which is a university, with traffic and pedestrians continually passing, however the dogs ignore all this. They even ignore me, a total stranger, sitting next to them to take a video.

Then a man with a pet dog walks passed and all hell breaks loose. This, I believe illustrates the big difference between street dogs and pet dogs: pets are socialized to people so react to strange people as they do to strange dogs which often means confront them, but most street dogs are not socialized to people so ignore people unless they have food or look like a physical threat. 

Hence, these street dogs ignore me (a human stranger) but challenge a pet dog (a canine stranger).

Bangalore Stray Dogs 150 Years Ago

The Deccan Herald has published a historical report of how Bangalore was suffering from “the menace stray dogs posed to the public” 150 years ago as today. They are quoting from a district gazette in 1866 where the local British authorities were offering a bounty for every dead dog brought to them (twice as much for a bitch). Later the municipal authorities took over the killing duties themselves which lasted as the “control” policy until 2001 (the fact that it carried on so long does make one question the effectiveness of the technique).

What I find particularly interesting in the article is the British administration quote that allows people to keep the dogs alive: “Individuals desirous of preserving their dogs are requested to have them muzzled or tied up.” In the context of the article this seems to be suggesting adoption.

To me this looks like an early example of Western attitudes to dogs being exported eastward. In effect the British assumption was that dogs should be pets, not free-ranging animals, but I suspect that at that time ownership really was a foreign concept for most of the population when it came to dogs.

The report clearly shows that the British Raj found the street dogs to be a problem but does not indicate what the native majority themselves thought. In some ways this hasn't changed much as the strength of western feeling on the stray dog issue easily overwhelms the general Asian indifference to their street dogs.

Bahrain aims for zero stray dogs in 5 years

The island state of Bahrain has announced plans to rid its streets of stray dogs within five years after two serious attacks on children in the last month according to the Gulf Daily News. The Bahrain Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals is in talks with authorities to follow their trap-neuter-release program.

However, this report states that the first attack was on an eleven-year-old child who was “mauled by five pet dogs”, followed the next day by a baby being “attacked in the same area”.  Yet again this looks like street dogs being blamed for the deeds of pets and the suggested use of trap-neuter-release of street dogs seems to be a misdirected solution.

Fiji Legally Defines Stray Dogs as Nocturnal?

The new Dogs Act in Fiji describes stray dogs as those that roam around between 7pm and 5am, whether they are wearing a collar or not. This clearly includes pets on the loose and gives authorities the power to take whatever measures they see fit for the seizure and destruction of these animals.

The report on this that I read in The Fiji Times Online leaves some questions open such as not clarifying whether Fiji has any stray dogs at all during the day. On the face of it this Act could be bad news for unowned dogs given the strong powers authorities will have for “dealing” with the animals. However, hopefully it will be a strong incentive for dog owners to keep their pets under control, which may just be enough to reduce the dog problem to a level that does not trigger the need to use the powers.

Article on Turkish Street Dogs

“The Wild Dogs of Istanbul” is an interesting description of this city’s stray dogs written by Bernd Brunner. On one hand, it is full of the assumptions of western attitudes such as saying that “the dogs’ position is a strange one” because they live around, but not with, people (to eastern eyes I suggest this isn’t at all strange). He also describes how residents who feed the dogs living on their street have a “reluctance to take in the animals”, but it only looks like reluctance if you come from a dogs-should-be-pets culture and here is actually describing the normal relationship.

However, on the other hand, the article is certainly written with more open eyes than most descriptions of street dog populations I have read and does give a very good historical and religious perspective.

In it he describes a history where the dogs have not only at times been despised and seen as an unwelcome part of the city but also of animals that were actually valued. For example, he cites traveller accounts from the 17^th century that reported how some rich residents bequeathed money to the dogs while others not only fed them but also treated wounds and provided shelter or straw mats for them to sleep on.

He also highlights the link between the street dog population and a garbage disposal system that gives the dogs access to edible trash. If this was removed the number of street dogs would likely decline but not totally disappear thanks to the age-old informal human-dog relationship that seems to be going strong in Istanbul. 

Some Stray Stats on Stray Dogs

With impressive accuracy, the city of Srinagar in northern India is reported to have 91,110 stray dogs. This must either be a case of misuse of statistical sampling or a deliberate attempt to give the impression of having some control over the situation.

Either way it makes me wonder if the Government Minister who quoted this figure actually understands what a stray dog is. Definitions do vary but pet dogs on the loose are a very important part of the stray dog problem everywhere due to their typically more aggressive behaviour towards people, but usually they only spend part of their time wandering beyond the control of their owner. These temporary strays are almost impossible to count accurately. Anyone who understands this would say something like, “Srinagar has around 90,000 stray dogs”.

On the other hand, if his definition of “stray dog” does not include pets on the loose then he has no chance of solving the problem.