Free roaming dogs: A canine utopia or a desperate life?
A ragged, thin lurcher arrived at our little town once — a real life ‘stranger comes to town’ story. She made a nervous home for herself on the outskirts, between the sheep fields and the damp woodlands. She edged into town during the day, looking for food. I fed her once with some chicken. I sat very still and threw the food a few yards in front of me. She crept forward and grabbed it, backing off carefully, eyes fixed on my face.
She weaved dangerously in and out of traffic and slid along the streets avoiding eye contact. The local vet hatched a plan to lace some food with tranquilizer and capture her. I don’t know if that worked, but a month or so later she’d been caught.
A big hearted local man took her in and worked patiently with her until she was calmer. He already shared his home with three other rescued dogs. We called him Mr Four Dogs, and he passed by our window twice a day, leads tangled and dogs panting. He said that after the lurcher lived with him for a few weeks he took her to the hills and let her off the lead. ‘She might have run, but then I’d know.’ he said. She came back.
He named her Lucy. Before that I secretly called her ‘Freedog.’ I romanticised the idea of her living free in the hills, coming and going as she pleased. In reality she was probably cold and hungry and at risk of illness and death.
Do we romanticise the idea of free roaming dogs?
Our culture has a contradiction when we think of dogs. We love our stories of wild dogs. There’s Red Dog, who travels around Australia, breaking hearts and making friends. The Call of the Wild, full of rugged men and dogs in the Alaskan wilds. Childhood dogs, like Lassie and The Littlest Hobo. More recent stories have taken a darker turn of revenge and fantasy, such as White God and Fifteen Dogs. In reality a lot of dogs are a like prisoners, however well looked after, especially in Europe and the US. Across the world dogs live very differently.
83% of the 900 million dogs that exist globally are ‘unrestrained,’ apparently. But what does this actually mean for dogs. Are some of them ‘wild,’ or neglected, or persecuted? Or existing somewhere in between these states of being?
What seems apparent is that the wellbeing of ‘roaming’ dogs depends on where in the world they live, and the behaviour of ‘roaming’ dogs is shaped by the behaviour of the human societies that they live near. Wherever they are, they are usually at the mercy of the nearest human settlement.
Note: I’m using the word ‘roaming’ dogs throughout this piece, as a way to describe dogs that aren’t technically wild dogs, but dogs that are strays, free-range and generally living without dedicated owners.
According to John Bradshaw, in ‘In defence of Dogs,’ there are dogs that have been wild for so many generations that they can hardly be lumped in with domestic dogs at all. Dingos, for instance. But to know how true domestic dogs might fare if they were left to ‘roam’ we need to look at dogs like the pariah dogs of west Bengal. There are other places where dogs live wild near to towns and cities, but according to Bradshaw, it’s hard to really see how they cope as they are usually semi persecuted by humans, so can’t ‘settle’ into a life free from fear and hiding. (p 75) It’s possible that West Bengal gives us the closest idea of how dogs might live if they were ‘free’ to roam, which isn’t to claim that the ives of pariah dogs aren’t difficult, but that they might be the closest to what I describe as ‘free roaming’ dogs.
Maya Nakra, in Mumbai, in the Maharashtra are of India, studies Indian Pye or Pariah dogs, of which there are 20 million. She says ‘Packs of dogs can be seen in every city, sharing sidewalks, market places, parks and residential colonies with humans. Homeless and hungry, these dogs rely on their natural instincts to survive and carve a space for themselves in cities bustling with people.’
The plight of roaming dogs depends upon where they live
The plight of ‘roaming’ dogs is often highlighted when they become persecuted. In Russia, the extermination of stray dogs during the 2018 world cup preparations made headline news. In Tunisia there have been campaigns to prevent the brutal killing of stray dogs. In Greece, the plight of stray dogs was beamed all over our screens in Europe when Loukanikos, known as the ‘riot dog,’ was seen joining in with protestors in the 2010 anti-austerity protests, eventually becoming Time ‘Person of the Year.’
Most roaming dogs aren’t as lucky as Loukanikos, who was relatively well cared for by the collective kindness of local people. A google search will take you to many places where being ‘free roaming’ is a living hell for so many dogs. The images of piles of dead dogs, killed by poison, guns and knives is haunting, and hard to reconcile with how I’ve lived in Britain, where dogs enjoy a certain level of care, ownership and legal protection. Maya Nakru talks of the ‘human-dog conflict’ and says of India: ‘Nothing short of a war has erupted in the country between those who advocate the complete, and often violent, eradication of strays and those who lend a voice to homeless dogs, fighting for their right to live.’
However, as much as people are exterminating roaming dogs, they are also protecting them, as far back as The Dog Riots of 1832 in Bombay (now Mumbai) where locals ‘took up arms’ to protect the stray dogs. In Istanbul, many of the locals collectively care for the ‘roaming’ dogs and took to the streets to protest when the local government advocated culling the strays. The film Taskafa: Stories From The Street documents the fight by Istanbul residents to save the stray dogs that live in and around the city.
In Rarotonga, The Cook Islands, free roaming dogs are cared for the community, who cover their veterinary treatment. They’ve developed the skills to fish are often seen in the shallow waters, looking for their next meal.
Chernobyl, in the Ukraine, is an extraordinary example of people caring for stray dogs. Chernobyl nuclear power plant and 120,000 people in the surrounding areas were evacuated in 1986, never to return. The descendants of the deserted pets still live in and around the exclusion zone. No civilians live near Chernobyl, but the specialist workers in the areas look after the packs of dogs, vaccinating, neutering and feeding them. Because of this intervention, the dogs are surprisingly well.
What do these stories, that are so varied from place to place, tell us about roaming dogs? Maybe that dog and human societies are tightly intertwined, and that domestic dogs and the descendants of domestic dogs depend upon human societies for their well being to a large degree. Whether that dependance is based on our waste as a food source, as is often the case in densely populated areas, or whether they simply depend on humans to leave them alone, unpersecuted, the societies they are attached to usually have the power to help or harm them. For every uplifting story of people who have fought to help roaming dogs, there is another where dogs have been brutalised.
How can roaming dogs be protected and cared for?
Maya Nakra suggests that the issue of roaming dogs ‘deserves sufficient space in public discourse and policy.’ I agree. So much depends on the laws and policies of the areas where these dogs dwell. The places where roaming dogs seem the happiest and healthiest is where there are programmes to help with health care and protection from harm. Dog welfare organisations are working hard to influence national policies, but are always fighting a battle in terms of sheer numbers of dogs and scarce funding.
When the ‘roaming’ dog arrived in my little town, it was unusual. Everyone looked out for her because she represented an anomaly — a dog without a human family. It’s hard for me to imagine a city full of roaming dog packs on street corners, but this is the situation in many parts of the world. At best these dogs are semi cared for, collectively, by a mix of policies and local populations. At worst they suffer constant violence, disease and upheaval because people live in fear of them, or would like to eradicate their existence. The work of groups and people bringing the plight of these dogs to light is so invaluable, partly because it can help them in the short term, but also because they can teach us a lot about dog behaviour.
Further reading and watching
