Who is responsible?

THE WOMAN is obviously upset. “Do you know what those dogs did?” she asks.

The woman and her mother have just moved into a house in my little soi. From my top floor, I’ve seen her walking her beagle, but I’ve never met her – or her dog before.

Now she’s stopped me on the soi to ask my about “those dogs”. She points to the two soi dogs who have been living on the soi for a few years now.

These dogs don’t have an easy life, for sure. At night, they find a hole or a doorway where they can sleep. The people on the soi feed them, but the food isn’t really suitable for dogs – leftover rice, scraps from the table, bones, and whatever else no one wants to eat.

The two dogs are not treated for any injury, receive no vaccination, are not neutered (of course), yet they’re strong. They look fairly healthy, if you don’t care about their fleas and ticks.

Above all, they are friendly. At first, they’d rush up to me and my poodle-pup Wan-Wan when we were on the street. One sharp command from someone sitting in a doorway, though, and the two stopped. From that point on, the dogs have ignored us, although, if I am by myself, one or the other trots up to me, hoping for some food or treat.

Yet living the way they do, their friendliness is so noticeable. Even if they aren’t interested in Wan, they are always smiling, two dogs who have decided that the little soi is their home.

Now this woman is telling me that the two merry dogs are actually monsters.

While she was walking her dog the other day, she tells me, the dogs attacked her dog, biting and scratching him. She was scratched herself, she adds, when she tried to break up the fight. Nobody in the soi tried to help her or even yelled at the dogs.

Now she brings a big stick with her when she takes her dog out, but, she says, “That’s no way to live.”

Her story doesn’t make sense to me. Those two dogs have always been friendly. The people on the soi have always called the dogs off if they were causing anyone trouble.

The woman tells me that she’ll speak to the people on the soi again and try to find out if anyone will accept responsibility for them or at least agree to help her when she walks her dog.

If no one will accept responsibility, then she’ll call someone to take the dogs away.

That night, I consider what she said. There must be a way for everyone to get along, I think.

I’ve heard of other neighbourhoods (and experienced it myself) when the soi dogs form packs and viciously attack people, especially at night. Besides, male dogs do have territorial issues, and perhaps the two dogs were protecting their turf.

Yet other neighbours walk their male dogs with no problem.

I didn’t see the attack. It’s possible that it wasn’t really an attack. The dogs were just over-excited.

Over the next few days, I look for the woman to find out what she’s decided to do, but it becomes obvious. The two soi dogs are gone.

“What happened?” I ask the people on the soi, but they won’t tell me. Perhaps they’re ashamed, or, more likely, they’re reluctant to take responsibility for the soi dogs.

The fate of the two dogs haunts me. I guess the woman called the BMA who took the dogs to the dog pound in Pravet or Uthai Thani. There, they live in a strange place full of strange dogs, without the safety of the life they once knew, in dirty, unhealthy conditions.