Taiwan Dogs

[Guest guest]

South China Morning Post

http://focus.scmp.com/focusnews/ZZZ8B6TJRGE.html

Thursday, February 2, 2006

 

TAIPEI

Puppy love and pet hates

by BRADLEY WINTERTON

 

Hike in any of the foothills surrounding Taipei and you will see

them - bitches with stretched, milky dugs, tentatively friendly pups

and fearful, suspicious males. These wretched creatures are the

unpalatable obverse of a chic mania for owning dogs. The small and

cute quickly become the large and inconvenient. Impatient owners

convince themselves that the dogs would feel more at home in the

great outdoors, sustained by nature - because that, after all, is

surely where they belong.

 

There are an estimated 1.6 million dogs on Taiwan, one for every 14

people. According to Yen Yi-feng, director of the Taipei Municipal

Institute for Animal Health, some 10,000 of them are abandoned

annually in Taipei alone. Almost all strays are discarded pets, he

says.

 

Taiwan's favourite pet breed is currently the red toy poodle, which

cost between NT$40,000 ($9,700) and NT$100,000 each. Celebrity model

Lin Chih-ling owns one, and what better recommendation could you ask

for? Such people will always have friends who would be proud to

accept any future cast-offs. But for the rest, when the time comes,

it is a trip up to the parklands of Yangmingshan or Hsin Beitou to

let your dog off the lead for a run-around, and then a guilty tiptoe

back to the car, and away. A single dog, new to the outcast scene,

will be under a sentence of death if not adopted into the feral pack.

Wildlife for food is very scarce, and the cast-offs' hunting skills

are at best embryonic.

 

So they become emaciated creatures depending almost exclusively on

rubbish bins: a bewildered interloper is not tolerated at the sites

of such a scarce resource. Finding a mate then becomes the key to

acceptance - a rite of initiation into the new feral existence.

 

Not that the Taiwanese don't take care of their dogs while they have

them. There are even dog restaurants - not where dog is eaten, but

where you are served your meal and your dog is served his. Usually

you eat under the eyes of the owners' own prized pets, themselves the

most effective adverts for these establishments.

 

Out among the volcanic hills, the wistful look is unmistakable in the

hungry eyes. The dogs gaze at you longingly, as if hoping you might

be the one willing to adopt them and bring them back into the warm,

well-fed existence they once knew. Lone curs will sometimes follow

you for hours, at a cautious distance, every quickened pace you take

a pain to you and to them - albeit in unequal measure.

 

The hope that their former owners will one day return must be the

most recurrent of impossible dreams for many of these desolate

creatures - even in this year that celebrates their kind.