The Stray Dogs of Bucharest

While previous posts might suggest that what we miss most about home is the bourgeois comfort and largesse of our American kitchen (those gleaming racks of immaculate All Clad pans and the hundred gadgets that clog our hundred cabinets), the truth is, what we miss most about home is the quiet, but utterly faithful presence of our remaining dog, Daphne, and our affectionate calico cat, Delilah. Granted, we get weekly updates on the state of their appetites and bowels, their state of animal happiness in the American springtime, which makes leaving them behind more acceptable. But the feeling that we’ve left two family members behind (since that is, in the end, how we think of our beasts) is irrepressible at times.

With regards to Delilah, we have every faith that she is just fine without our presence: except for around feeding time (when we are indeed the center of her universe), we typically feel a little superfluous around our haughty, independent little cat. But Daphne, like most canines, makes it her life’s business to melt into the emotional lives of her human companions, utterly dependent and needy, trapped within the domesticated halls of our big house, sprawling about on the Turkish rugs.

Knowing this, imagine how utterly defeated, selfish, and also very inspired we feel while studying the thousands of stray dogs populating our neighborhood. We are frequently astonished at their ingenuity and endurance, their ability to adapt to a world we find nearly impossible to navigate ourselves. To our surprise, it’s rare to see a dog here that looks under-fed. They drink from the public fountains. They hang out next to the beer gardens and meatball stands for tidbits to drop beneath tables. They cross the streets on crosswalks at the correctly appointed time, when the human herd crosses (I have yet to see one come close to being hit by a car...though I've seen enough looking hobbled to know that it probably happens a lot). If there’s a patch of green grass on a boulevard, it’s not unusual to see a few dogs romping there, oblivious to the hum of urban activity around them. And they sleep everywhere, just underfoot most of the time, tucked in next to the ATM machine in the sun, or under the bench of a bus-stop, or in the expensive landscaping of Belle Époque mansions. They set up camp within the blossoming precints of the botanical gardens and the city parks. They are resilient and hilarious, and often heart-breaking. Only one in twenty wears the yellow “tag” in its ear, indicating that it's been properly vaccinated and sterilized, that it has official permission to survive.

Undoubtedly, behind the scenes and the cover of dark, along back alleys and in vacant lots, their lives are violent and awful. Yesterday we approached what we thought was a gorgeous black and brown mutt sleeping in the sun. “Oh look,” one of us said, “that dog is dreaming of chasing rabbits.” When we got closer, however, we saw that the dog’s eyes were wide open, that he was having a seizure right there on the sidewalk. What could be done for such a dog? Hope is about all we could offer. And, to our great relief, about three hours later we saw the same dog frisking about behind an apartment complex in the neighborhood, bright-eyed, tail high in the air, exploring a garden with his spotted nose.

It's said that the population of strays in Bucharest is a hangover from the Communist period here. When Ceascescu "nationalized" housing (kicking families out of their homes and apartments only to relocate other families, and often several at a time, into those homes....so there were twelve people now living where there had been four), the canine "comrades" were not part of the plan... so family pets were simply set loose upon the streets to fend for themselves. Several generations later, these diasporic dogs are still looking for homes; lucky for them, the new capitalist era comes with certain benefits. Now the locals have enough food and money of their own to afford a bag of dog food now and then for the "neighborhood dogs" (it's not uncommon to see bowls of clean water and kibble set out by some samaritan in the local parks). They are ignored, but not entirely unnoticed.

Case in point: just as I am writing this, sitting here in a blast of sunshine in a sidewalk café on Dorobantiler Blvd., a bedraggled blonde retriever pup—no more than six months old, her fur slightly dread-locked with tar, her yellow coat streaked with street dirt, has plopped down right in the middle of the sidewalk. Pedestrians must walk around her to make progress down the street. She is staring intently across the boulevard and two lanes of clogged traffic at, yes, another dog. I see her sniff the air to try to catch a whiff: friend or canine foe? Then, two old ladies step down from the curb to cross the street with their canes, parting traffic in their wake. The puppy jumps up clumsily to join them at their heels, using their slow pace to make a safe crossing, looking warily from side-to-side at the multi-colored bumpers and massive tires that loom about her, off to some adventure in the secret world of the Bucharestian dog.

C

(P.S. Double-click on any of the photos to see these impressive curs up close)