I love the street dogs in Bangkok. (Everyone here calls them “soi dogs,” as “soi” is the Thai word for “alley.”)
The canines here and scrappy and they’ve got tons of attitude. They’re usually friendly, and since Thai people are Buddhists and they generally don’t believe in hurting living things, the stray pooches are often in pretty decent shape. Stray dogs often stick to regular territories — their beats, if you will — and the folks who live nearby seem to pitch in and feed them. The other day I saw one of my neighbors, a middle-aged lady, scamper across four busy lanes of traffic to give a local soi dog a nice big bag of food. He was delighted.
(This is not to say, of course, that all stray dogs in Bangkok are looked after properly — lots aren’t, but my experience is that compared to canines I’ve seen in developing countries like Ecuador or Cambodia, the dogs in Thailand have got it pretty good.)
Anyway, given that I love Thai soi dogs, you can imagine my surprise upon discovering that they’ve got their own blog — authored by a real, live Thai soi dog, Cassanova. Seriously.