It’s a dog’s life
A few days ago I was sitting with some friends outside Sabor restaurant in northern Nicosia looking at a bunch of kids running around the Selimiye Square with a young white hunting dog. “I have seen this scene before,” I thought and remembered that yes, a year ago, I was sitting in the same place and saw exactly the same situation but with a different stray dog, and six months ago as well but with yet another puppy, and again three months later with another one.
I had just finished my lunch when I saw the next scene – the kids were tying the dog with a piece of rope to a door. They were a bit rough with it but it was still jumping all over them with happiness. It was probably thinking: “Somebody is taking care of me. They love me. I am lucky.”
I drove away trying not to think about how long it would survive in the street, even with the support of his little friends. A month or two? Or maybe a bit longer? At least it is in a place where there is not too much traffic and I know that the people from Sabor will feed it occasionally. So it has a chance, providing that nobody poisons it or drives over it on purpose or burns it or shoots it, as we all know some people will when faced with a harmless creature.
Later the same day I had to go to Famagusta. I assume you know the road – it’s flat and straight and quite uncomplicated and both sides are full of dog and cat corpses. I remembered what somebody told me about the task of cleaning these bodies. Apparently, neither the Famagusta road nor the Kyrenia one (decorated in a similar manner) belong to any municipality so there is an ongoing discussion about who should do it. And it is months before any action is taken.
The next day I went to Kakopetria in the south. The sight was similar: a road full of dead cats and dogs. And then I remembered what one of state veterinarians told the Cyprus Mail this week after the story about the National Guard soldiers setting fire to a dog had been published.
“Not every day animals are killed in the army,” he said. After all, in spite of all these reports of animal abuse by soldiers, he might have a point, I thought. The army doesn’t kill the majority of dogs in Cyprus. And hopefully it doesn’t do it every day of the week either. But drivers do, and the poison and all these nice people who dump their unwanted dogs all over the place, both sides of the divide, because they think that this is the way to deal with the problem.
The vet also told the Mail that “things (regarding animal welfare) are much better in Cyprus now than thirty years ago”. Again I don’t think that anybody would question this statement. But does it mean that the situation is really OK? No, it isn’t. Just go to the Nicosia Dog Shelter or the similar institution in Paphos. Talk to the people who run them. Have a look at some of the animals they have. Listen to the stories. Believe me, you will hear about some really bad cases. And most likely you won’t be able to imagine that a human being is capable of such cruelty.
The truth is that life of animals like dogs or cats is still worth nothing on the island as the majority of the population regards them as totally replaceable. And it doesn’t mean that Cypriots dislike them. I would say they are ambivalent and totally unaware of their own cruelty. They think it is OK to keep dogs in small cages, with a cement floor, for days without food or water because this is how everybody else does it. They think it is enough to take them out of the cages only when the hunting season is on because these animals have a function and that is why they have them. And they think it is OK to get rid of the dogs that are not able to perform this function well enough because they have no real relation with them so killing or abandoning them don’t really matter. In short, Cypriots often treat their dogs the way they used to relate in the old times to their goats and sheep.
I don’t go around the island looking for stray dogs, yet if I wanted I would be able to pick up one a day with no effort whatsoever. Any size, colour, gender, age or breed is available. I have found huskies, golden retrievers, pointers and poodles, puppies, adults and pregnant bitches, all gentle and loving, still full of hope that people will be good to them. I have seen countless wild dogs in the buffer zone, terrified of the sight of a human being. I have seen sad, old hunting dogs roaming the countryside after each hunting season, dumped there by their masters.
The vet said that “Cypriots are animal lovers”. I would say they have still a long way to go.
