The first time I stepped in dog poo on the sidewalk, I got really upset. What owner doesn’t have the common courtesy to pick up after his/her dog? It took both of us longer than it should have to realize that a pet hadn’t made the mess on the sidewalk. It was one of the many stray dogs that roam the streets of Istanbul. It really is quite interesting. You walk through a park and see half a dozen dogs napping in the sun. Or some lucky ones enter into a symbiotic working relationship where a nice homeowner decides to leave their food scraps outside. The apartment next to ours actually named their dog Kont (as in Count, like the Count of Monte Cristo.) In return, the dog provides protection to the occupants, but with none of those inconvenient pet restrictions like fences, chains, or leashes. This may be an odd way to describe it, but really, the dog is like a bodyguard, following the older women and children as they run errands in the neighborhood.
But no worries, it seems like nearly all of the dogs are tagged. The tag means that they were captured by the city, “fixed”, and given their vaccinations before they are let back into the “wild”. This has led to a decrease in street dog population in the last five years. The dogs are also unbelievably mellow.
Maybe in another post, I’ll describe the street cat population. I know, you can’t wait.
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