Thais and ill-treatment of dogs

Posted by admin on October 1st, 2007 filed in Safety, expat life, the locals

If you are an animal lover you’ll probably be quite dismayed upon arriving in Thailand. The treatment here of animals might shock you, for they are regarded then quite differently to what we expect in the West. Neglected, starving street dogs are everywhere, and pets sometimes suffer cruel conditions.

Yet Thais adore pets. You need only look around you at the countless pet shops full of all sorts of cute accessories. Often you see them riding around on motorbikes, with the pet dog balancing on the back or leaning on the steering bar. Some wealthy families spend more on their dogs each month than they pay their servants. They pamper them and take them everywhere – especially if they are little poodles they can fit in a neat little basket.

Despite this, they have a rather disinterested viewpoint on animal welfare. The SPCA doesn’t exist here and any animal help societies are usually run with input from concerned foreigners. If the dog isn’t yours then it can be ignored. Even if it is yours, many adopt a rather irresponsible approach to keeping pets and will simply throw it scrap food and let it run wild around the neighbourhood.

Feral dogs are huge problem in Thailand. They are everywhere, and usually congregate around temples, where they are fed. No attempt is made to round them up or neuter them, so that they breed and produce packs of wild urban hounds that are often in a poor state, having lost all their hair and suffering from arthritis.

With this comes noise. A typical Thai neighbourhood will be a cacophony of barking, howling, yelping, yapping and fierce fighting. Dogs aren’t kept in yards, they run down the street growling at each other, continually barking and causing havoc. No one does anything. Thais are impervious to the noise and couldn’t care less. If anything they are humoured by it all.

And no attention is paid either to dogs on heat, and this causes endless problems. A female dog will be left to roam the streets as dozens of males show up, invariably she will get mounted and two stuck together helplessly as other dogs attack the male for their turn. No won takes any notice. When the puppies arrive they are delighted by them until they are no longer cute in which case interest is lost.

Much of this has to do with an indifferent approach to responsibility. The future consequences are less considered in Thai society. No one takes the initiative to prevent or stop something if it is out of their ambit of authority – ie outside their yard. A Thais are less mindful of such things as ‘dogs on heat’.

I have a neighbour who has a fierce pack of mongrels that kick up an endless barrage of barking all day as anything and everything comes past their gate. It’s just too much. Then they locked one of them up for three weeks in a tiny cage while they added a perimeter wall to prevent her running away. She howled all day and night in protest. They ignored here. When I went and asked when she would be let out and politely pointed out the noise and disruption that were incensed. It’s just not done in Thailand to interfere with a neighbours affairs. And herein lies the problem. In all his years a neighbour has never once come and complained to him about dog noise, he simply couldn’t fathom that he was being inconsiderate.

Meanwhile his dogs have mangled the wood on my gate, having been let out and raising hell with my dogs. I’m woken up every morning with a hell of a commotion as other lose dogs wander down the street past their gate. There is little I can do.

It’s not just dogs. Often you see animals in captivity kept in tiny cages, in appalling conditions. I once saw a gibbon chained cruelly outside a restaurant entrance – the owner thought it might attract customers. I’ve seen night apes (nocturnal animals) close to death because the owner had no idea it didn’t like bright light. There are markets full of animals for sales, such as Chatuchak in Bangkok, even though it’s illegal and the police raid periodically. The demand for cute exotic pets keeps them in business, despite the bribes to avoid prosecution.

And there are the elephants who no longer have logging jobs in the jungle and have been brought into the city centre of Bangkok to roam the tourist streets by night trying to raise donations for the mahouts. It’s all part of Thailand. They simply don’t keep animals on the same level as humans, and have a completely different viewpoint on what are acceptable conditions for keeping domesticated animals.