Cerberus's Ugly Cousins

The fact that I have stopped noticing how bad they look was recently drawn to my attention while I was listening to a piece of news on the radio. The item concerned some irate dog lovers in the States that had discovered their coyote trimmed coats were not trimmed in coyote fur but with dog pelt. I paused to immediately think that the coat owners were a little bit hypocritical, coyotes and dogs are of the same genus and all. Also I paused to think why anyone would be fooled by dog pelt; dog pelt will be coarse and scabby with mange. Ah! These are normal dogs, I quickly remembered they usually have an abundance of fur from being health and well feed.

In Taiwan people do have dogs as pets, though usually yappy evil little creatures that their owners carry around. The majority of Taiwan's canine population is made up of stray dogs that have been allowed to proliferate until they inhabit every nook and cranny. Taiwan has a very ineffective policy for controlling the problem, a policy that seems nonexistent and under-financed. It even looks like there is not a policy at all if the fact that there seems to be no end to the stray dogs can be counted as evidence. Possible the authorities hope that the stray dogs will control their own population; as the numbers increase the available food will become scarce and famine will kill off the excess numbers, that and the fact that and the dogs have to survive in the hostile mechanical world of man.

With so many stray dogs on the island, the government statistic is for every pet dog there is a stray dog. Other statistics estimate the dog population between one and two million, the human population is just over twenty. You may wonder where they get their food. Well, for the majority of them they do not. Some stray dogs will pick up the odd scrap of food from a kind person, but for the rest, foraging in the trash and out on the streets is the only course of action.

Taiwan has a very regular garbage collection system. Garbage is collected every night by garbage trucks that cruise the streets in the late afternoon and evening. They play a little melody by Mozart to let you know they are in the vicinity. People will already have left they trash by the roadside or will take it out to the truck as it passes. This means a lot of fresh trash is left out every night for stray dogs and cats to pick at, and since the garbage is left in plastic bags, it is not difficult for them to rip the bags open and spread the trash around the street. As an side, when I first came to Taiwan, and heard the melody by Mozart drift across the evening air, I always hungered for an ice-cream.

The dogs will, in their hunger, eat anything from trash to road kill, this might be a reason that Taiwan does not have as much dog crap on the streets as other countries. And when there is not enough to go around you will see their emaciated forms prowling in the middle of the roads desperate to find anything even at the risk of being run over.

Considering the lifestyle of these animals, it is not hard to imagine that they can look like something from hell. When they are bought into the World, as a litter to a stray bitch or let loose by a careless, or unhappy owner they will look cute. They will be healthy and have a full pelt of fur. But if they cannot find an ample supply of food they will slowly change. Usually mange will set in and the mutts fur will begin to fall off. While searching for food it will pick up wounds from being hit by passing traffic. A distinctive feature of a lot of stray dogs here is a broken leg. Almost twenty to thirty percent of stray dogs here have either a fore or hind limb that is broken. The dogs will be handicap for the rest of their lives, usually until they have a second limb broken and then it is all over for them. I have even seen a large number of pet dogs that are lame in one leg, the owners do not seem to be interested in having the leg set in a cast or amputated, the dog just hops around with the remains hanging off.

I do admit, that in the early period of straydom, the stray mutts have a tendency to look cute and lovable, unless of course, they are born downright ugly from the start. They can pull on the heartstrings, and expats and kind Taiwanese will endeavor to care for the odd local mutt. The mutts can have adorable faces with pleading, tearful eyes. I have put this down to two factors; one, a tendency to compare the mutts here with the dogs back home, and two, the Darwinian system of the survival of the cutest, which allows the prettiest to survive long enough to pass on their genes to the next generation.

The system of control that the Taiwanese have has been criticized recently by American animal welfare organizations. Even Steven Segal, the well known martial arts actor, has lamented the poor and often terrible treatment of stray dogs impounded by the authorities. Treatment that Taiwan has tried to stop or cover-up. A recent issue of the China News (Saturday 16th of Jan, 1999) had a front cover picture of a cage, that had just been pulled out of a water tank, filled with the dead carcasses of mutts. The picture was not taken by cruelty inspectors, but was taken at a local government dog pound. Drowning is one of the methods Taiwan uses for curing its over-population of dogs, a method that has attracted foreign media coverage the government is trying to avoid.

As well as drowning dogs, the local authorities employ electrocution to kill the dogs. Why they use this method, I do not know, as it involves the expensive of the electricity, while drowning is cheaper. With electrocution the workers do save themselves a lot of effort, since the dogs will already be penned up in a metal cage. (For pictures to show how many dogs they get into one cage go to the references at the bottom.) Therefore, as you can guess the workers just hook the cage up to the mains and flick the switch. I do not think the amperage is too high on the mains, so they might have to wait a few minutes for all the dogs to die.

Many of the foreigners who work in Taiwan take some pity on the dogs. Often from nations that traditional consider dogs as their best friends, they are overwhelmed with the desire to look after the mutts. A bad move indeed, since the mutts will overwhelm them. Taiwan's stray dog problem cannot be solved through caring for the illness, but thorough curing the problem. The semi-adoption of mutts by foreigners is a common thing. Many foreigners will save scrape meat and tidbits to give their adopted pet. The dog will become friendly and happy to have someone care for it, but in the end the animal will invariable be left behind when the foreigner moves on or finds the task difficult to continue. Feeding the mutt is one thing, but complete responsibility can be too much.

Some foreigners, with a longer stay on the island have started to promote the protection and care of the stray dogs. Their endeavors are insufficient to handle the problem, though good natured and the aid highlights the plight of the mutts. The two main approaches are either to start adoption programs for the strays, or, just as bad as the euthanasia idea of electrocuting the mutts, to spay and neuter them.

The first scheme, that a lot of foreigners use, is to adopt a mutt and take it off the street. This is an approach, which is useful in countries that have enforced dog control and therefore few stray dogs, does nothing to solve the problem here. It is only a way to alleviate the adopters feeling of pity for the mutts in general. It is a donation to save a mutt which means the adopter can shrug off the responsibility of helping strays dogs in general. And invariable the mutts that get adopted are those with the strongest cuteness factor in their genes.

The second approach is ludicrous. The idea that you are helping the stray dogs or even reducing their numbers is naive. The doctored strays will only have to continue their pitiful existence. The male dogs will lose one of their few pleasures. And spaying the bitches will not effect the general population; unless the whole population of stray bitches is spayed, which is not in the budget of the foreign organizations, then the effort is just a waste of time and only profits the veterinary clinics.

Stray dogs are not totally useless. Some are used as guard dogs as they have a tendency to bark at most things that pass by. Also they keep other dogs at bay, running a stray dog of your property is of little use as others will soon fill the vacant space, so usually a policy of the devil you know works well. Furthermore, stray dogs are considered a free meal by some. The eating of dog meat might be considered repugnant by western nations, but many Asians think it is a delicacy and beneficial for the health.

The eating of dog flesh is not to the liking of every Chinese person. It is frowned on by those who have taken the Western idea that dogs are man's best friend. Even in the Chinese language it seems shunned. The Chinese language can be rather simple when it comes to the names of meats, compared to English which has a different word for every kind of meat. The basic term is 'Rou' which means 'meat,' to this is added a prefix which is the name of the animal that the meat comes from. For example, chicken would be 'chicken meat' in Chinese, beef would be 'cow meat,' mutton would be 'sheep meat,' and so on. But dog meat is called 'fragrant meat' and is the only name of any meat that I know of, and I know nearly all of them, that does not use the animal's name. This fact begs the question, do the Chinese find the idea of eating dog too sensitive? Too sensitive for a culture that is renown for eating almost anything that moves, does not move, or is not nailed down.

The distinctive unease that is associated with the eating of dog meat has forced the restaurants that cater this delicacy to locate in out-of-the-way places. Rural areas and near army barracks seem to be the best places to setup shop. This is because farmers consider the meat beneficial for resisting the cold during Winter, and the soldiers for a similar reason and possibly as a dare. Restaurants selling dog meat are easy to spot once you know the main features to look for. The easiest thing to look for is a white bowl hanging upside-down outside the establishment with the Chinese character for 'fragrant meat' (-?|¡Ñ) written on it. Next, you will usually notice that the restaurant does not have many windows and is lacking a bill board listing all the different dishes that can be purchased inside. These signs should alert the passerby that the place is not as ordinary as it looks. And if the place is well away from the main road and from other houses you might also get to see a few dogs penned outside, being fattened up and waiting their turn for their last dinner invitation.

References:

Photos of dogs in Taiwanese pounds - taken by the Life Conservationists Association.

The Yearning - tales of stray dogs in Taiwan