I love dogs

So…later this week I’ll post something humorous and fun, but today I’m feeling contemplative and a little down about the state of the world. This is your warning. Feel free to not read this…seriously, you can go watch a sitcom or read a cartoon instead…really, still reading? Okay.

So…I love animals: cats, dogs, sheep, horses, whatever (with a few exceptions – snakes and spiders, not high on my list). There’s something innocent and without guile about animals.

Anyway, people I know who’ve lived in the developing world before have always told me that I’d change my tune on dogs when I lived somewhere with them all over the place (I believe the words mangy, diseased, and gross have all been used in these conversations).

All I can say is that they were wrong. There are dogs everywhere here…and I mean all over the place. When I spent a month in Northern Ghana several years ago, I told everyone that there were goats all over the place (in yards, outside bars, in the middle of the road, etc.). The same is true in Addis Ababa for dogs. They tend to look sad and a little diseased and underfed. Far from being disgusted (as I was promised I would be), I want to take all these dogs home, give them a bath and food, and take them to the vet to get them shots/medicine/etc. I kind of want to be the Pied Piper of dogs, walking down the street with a pack following after me.

Unfortunately, not only can I not do this (for all kinds of feasibility reasons, including the fact that I don’t currently have a home), but it’s fairly dangerous for me to take time to pet the dogs because I stupidly forgot to get rabies shots before coming over and it’s widely prevalent over here.

So…I’ve started doing the only thing I could think of - I give them food. You can buy pretty big rolls over here for 1 birr, 20 cents each (about 6.7 US cents), which I eat a lot of (I know, you’re all shocked). Anyway, I started buying a bunch of these at once, and I carry them around with me. When I see a dog on the side of the street, I will give it some of a roll. Check out this incredibly cute little black puppy hanging out on the side of the street because he/she doesn’t have anyone to take care of it. When he/she stood up and walked a few feet, I noticed a limp. It was sad.

And this dog who lives pretty close to this house I'm looking at.

As you do this, you start to realize how poorly dogs (and animals in general) are treated here. They shy away from you even when you try to put food in front of them. I see kids throwing rocks at dogs. People herding goats don’t herd like in the US (where you use the whip to hit to the side of the animals so they know to go the other way). They just continually hit the goats in the back of the pack with a stick, which just scares the animals and is super unproductive.

It goes without saying that there are lots of people who are destitute here, which is incredibly depressing and is a big part of why I’m doing the work I’m doing in agriculture development. The starvation, violence, and rampant disease affect not just humans but animals as well. A lot of this is inherent to a fallen world, and a lot of it we create with the way we treat the rest of God’s children and his other creations.

To make things worse, the government is now going around and killing the dogs on the streets now (see this article). It seems to me that spaying/neutering all the dogs and giving them all rabies shots would be a much more permanent solution, as opposed to letting the population grow and then killing them off every few years. They have vets here, and that might even be a more cost effective approach over the long term as well.

My life has been really comfortable. I’ve been super blessed in temporal things, so while I’ve always looked forward to the coming of Christ, I haven’t really felt the yearning that I do now. Only He can cure the world of all the suffering that exists here. Turns out living in a fallen world kind of sucks.

Having said all that, I love Addis and am happier here all the time, but I’m sad that I can’t give every person and animal I interact with a life as good as mine.

Something more upbeat next time, I promise :)