Bored Dogs in Flats

My neighbours have a little doggie who sits inside a flat all day and goes crazy from boredom. Every time anyone passes his door, he runs up behind and barks his little head off. The kids take him out once a day, in the afternoon after school. I don’t know if he goes out otherwise. Probably at least once.

The Spanish have a different attitude towards animals than people
from a British background. Leaving bullfighting aside, they don’t seem to respect animals the way I am used to. For example, it’s not at all uncommon to see a large Alsatian chained up inside of a link fence, left to guard whatever is valuable – property, vehicles, machines etc. In the yard beside my grandmother’s old house in Alfaz del Pi a large dog used to idle his days away, alone, and bark just to hear his own voice at any passing human or vehicle. I never saw anyone care for the thing or give it a little break from its yard. Nope, it just rotted there, alone, for years.

The other day I ran into the guy from Kristal, the Internet cafe I sometimes use. He said that he had to take the dog out for his mother as it had been inside all day. Well, I was more than a little surprised when a hip-height muzzled doberman bitch was walked out from the entrance to their block of flats. Imagine! Keeping an adult Doberman in a flat! Her hair was greasy and dandruffy and she smelt like dog. The poor damn thing was being robbed of all her dignity, her animality, her very essence of what makes a dog a dog. Why keep a ghost of a dog? Why bother? It can’t be fun to live with a bored, under-exercised, smelly animal can it? I mean, it costs money to care for an animal – why are they doing it if they don’t want the best animal friend they can have? Does it go without saying that the dog’s ‘walk’ lasted all of about 5 minutes, to the end of a paved street where the railway passes through town and then back to the flat.

God, that just fills me with pity. Dogs need to sniff grass, to run in a pack and make friends, to stretch their legs and use their noses and lick gross stuff and roll in gross stuff and just BE DOGS. They may be beautiful, but they are not ornamental. They have been human’s friends and servants for thousands of years and yet, in 2006, we still haven’t figured out that they deserve the same level of respectaccorded an adult human – if not more at times.

And on that note, last night I went out to the opening of a new bar called Cocoon, in the Plaza de la Iglesia. As I left the flat I came across a small but steaming pile of dog shit. It was still there when I returned at 3 am and by morning time, it had collected a little note. I don’t know what “huarro: is, but it basically says “Dirty Dirty and it’s not the dog it’s the owner” har har har. Can’t wait to see where this one goes….

Over and out