Tag: Moscow

The Tenacity of Dogs, part two.

More on how dogs adapt to challenges in their lives.

(As readers picked up from my closing comment in yesterday’s part of this story, technology has rather interfered with events.  ‘Touch wood’ things appear to be back to normal!)

Yesterday’s article (thanks to Paul Gilding for the link) was about the stray dogs in Moscow.  Before musing on the more general nature of how dogs survive as strays, there is a video on YouTube about these Muscovite dogs.  Just over 7 minutes long, it further underlines the amazing adaptability of the domesticated dog when thrust into self-survival.

As regular readers of Learning from Dogs will know, before Jean and I met, Jean had spent a large part of her life rescuing dogs in the San Carlos area of Mexico, much of that with Suzann (who was instrumental in Jean and me meeting!).  Indeed, when Jean and I moved up to Payson in February, 2010 we had with us, much to the amusement of the American border staff at the Nogales crossing, 12 dogs and 6 cats, all rescues except my German Shepherd dog, Pharaoh.

So Jean has lots of stories about how the far-too-many stray dogs in San Carlos developed strategies for staying alive.  Dhalia, see story below, shows her feral habits when we go out for a walk in the forest by constantly looking for food, despite the fact that she is a well-fed, happy and contented dog.  Jean recounts finding Dhalia,

It was in 2005, about three months after Ben died (Jean’s husband). I was driving out to the small Mexican fishing port of La Manga where there were many stray dogs.  The aim was to feed them on a regular basis and hope that they would become sufficiently comfortable with my presence so that they could be caught, so that they may be spayed or neutered and then offered for adoption.

On the way there, I drove past a couple of dogs running alongside the highway.  Dogs frequently did this looking for ‘road-kill’ that they could feed on.  I stopped the car wanting to put out some food and water.

One of the dogs was so feral that it immediately took off into the bush.  I turned around and the other dog was standing about ten feet away.  It was cadaverous and obviously suffering from mange but cautiously came up to the food, sniffed carefully and then started to eat.  That dog allowed me to pick it up and then sat quietly with me on the front seat of the car while I continued to La Manga.  It sense immediately that it was safe and from that day has remained with me.  I named her Dhalia.

Dhalia in Jean's arms, November 2008

Fast forward to today.  Dhalia is one of Pharaoh’s group of dogs and is a sweet and loving animal.

Finally, a couple of other stories to give you a feeling about these rescue dogs. One from August 2009 about a dog called Lucky Lucy.  The other about Corrie, both stories from Suzann.

Enjoy.

The Tenacity of Dogs, part one.

Stray dogs demonstrate remarkable skills at staying alive.

Before I start, a big word of thanks to Paul Gilding who passed this story to me.  Apart from reading Paul’s powerful book, The Great Disruption, and exchanging a couple of emails, he doesn’t know me from Adam.  But the fact that this undoubtedly busy man (his book has been a great success) not only responded to an earlier email from me and then dropped me a note to say that I might enjoy the following article, says a great deal about the integrity of the person.

The article, from the website The Dog Files, is about Moscow’s stray dogs.  I’m taking the liberty of reproducing it in full.

Each morning, like clockwork, they board the subway, off to begin their daily routine amidst the hustle and bustle of the city.

But these aren’t just any daily commuters. These are stray dogs who live in the outskirts of Moscow Russia and commute on the underground trains to and from the city centre in search of food scraps.

Then after a hard day scavenging and begging on the streets, they hop back on the train and return to the suburbs where they spend the night.

Experts studying the dogs, who usually choose the quietest carriages at the front and back of the train, say they even work together to make sure they get off at the right stop – after learning to judge the length of time they need to spend on the train.

Scientists believe this phenomenon began after the Soviet Union collapsed in the 1990s, and Russia’s new capitalists moved industrial complexes from the city centre to the suburbs.

Dr Andrei Poiarkov, of the Moscow Ecology and Evolution Institute, said: “These complexes were used by homeless dogs as shelters, so the dogs had to move together with their houses. Because the best scavenging for food is in the city centre, the dogs had to learn how to travel on the subway – to get to the centre in the morning, then back home in the evening, just like people.”

Dr Poiarkov told how the dogs like to play during their daily commute. He said: “They jump on the train seconds before the doors shut, risking their tails getting jammed. They do it for fun. And sometimes they fall asleep and get off at the wrong stop.”

The dogs have also amazingly learned to use traffic lights to cross the road safely, said Dr Poiarkov. And they use cunning tactics to obtain tasty morsels of shawarma, a kebab-like snack popular in Moscow.

With children the dogs “play cute” by putting their heads on youngsters’ knees and staring pleadingly into their eyes to win sympathy – and scraps.

Dr Poiarkov added: “Dogs are surprisingly good psychologists.”

By Elaine Furst for Dog Files

Now had this been a normal day then I would have had the time to complete this story about the tenacity of dogs.  But a failed wireless modem earlier today (Thursday) meant the loss of too many hours fighting technology.  It was all sorted just a little before 5pm.  It is now 6.15 pm and dinner is ready and, frankly, my brain is too tired to continue.

So stay with this fascinating story about stray dogs as I continue it tomorrow (Saturday, 20th.).

More on Bill McKibben’s book, eaarth.

Some very telling points.

I first mentioned this book on the 13th May when I was about a third of the way in.  Because I thought there might be material useful to the course that has been running here in Payson, I did skip around the book looking for ‘attention-grabbing’ points.  It wasn’t difficult to find numerous extracts.

Try this on page 214 from the Chapter Afterword.

As it turns out, however, the BP spill was not the most dangerous thing that happened in the months after this book was first published.  In fact, in the spring and summer of 2101, the list of startling events in the natural world included:

  • Nineteen nations setting new all-time high temperature records, which in itself is a record.  Some of those records were for entire regions – [then some of the details]
  • Scientists reported that the earth had just come through the warmest six months, the warmest year, and the warmest decade for which we have records; it appears 2010 will be the warmest calendar year on record.
  • The most protracted and extreme heat wave in a thousand years of Russian history (it had never before topped 100 degrees in Moscow) led to a siege of peat fires that shrouded the capital in ghostly, deadly smoke.  [Then goes on to mention the effect of this heat on global grain prices.]
  • Since warm air holds more water vapour that cold air, scientists were not surprised to see steady increases in flooding.  Still, the spring and summer of 2010 were off the charts.  We saw “thousand-year storms” across the globe [goes into details]
  • Meanwhile, in the far north, the Petermann Glacier on Greenland calved an iceberg four times the size of Manhattan.
  • And the most ominous news of all might have come from the pages of the eminent scientific journal Nature, which published an enormous study of the productivity of the earth’s seas. [More details follow – not good news!]
That last point can be read in more detail from Nature‘s website.  It’s here.
The book closes thus (referring to how the BP oil spill was, ultimately, an accident),
But the greatest danger we face, climate change, is no accident.  It’s what happens when everything goes the way it’s supposed to go.  It’s not a function of bad technology, it’s a function of a bad business model: of the fact that Exxon Mobil and BP and Peabody Coal are allowed to use the atmosphere, free of charge, as an open sewer for the inevitable waste from their products.  They’ll fight to the end to defend that business model, for it produces greater profits that any industry has ever known.  We won’t match them dollar for dollar: To fight back, we need a different currency, our bodies and our spirit and our creativity.  That’s what a movement looks like; let’s hope we can rally one in time to make a difference.
Powerful stuff from a powerful book.
Fired up?  Then go and join:  350.org

Moscow’s dogs

Another example of the very tight bonds between man and dogs.

A couple of weeks ago Learning from Dogs published a series of videos originally broadcast by the BBC Horizon programme called The Secret Life of the Dog.  It revealed a hitherto unknown depth of understanding of dogs by man and man by dogs.  Part One of those six parts is linked to here.

Now it turns out that Russian Muscovites are fascinated by stray dogs and it is estimated that there are 35,000 stray dogs in the Russian capital city.

Interestingly, because we tend to associate the newspaper with financial matters, the British Financial Times had a fascinating article a couple of weeks ago, from which is quoted:

Where did these animals come from? It’s a question Andrei Poyarkov, 56, a biologist specialising in wolves, has dedicated himself to answering. His research focuses on how different environments affect dogs’ behaviour and social organisation. About 30 years ago, he began studying Moscow’s stray dogs. Poyarkov contends that their appearance and behaviour have changed over the decades as they have continuously adapted to the changing face of Russia’s capital. Virtually all the city’s strays were born that way: dumping a pet dog on the streets of Moscow amounts to a near-certain death sentence. Poyarkov reckons fewer than 3 per cent survive.

Do read the article as it is a revealing piece about our interest in dogs in all corners of the world.  Indeed it mentions a web site devoted to stray dogs on Moscow’s Metro railway.

Russian stray

By Paul Handover