We are the mutts not them…

Romanian poet Valeriu D G Barbu writes of a push for euthanizing all the street dogs in Bucharest

Mexico City’s Street Dog Monument

Dogs are holding our souls in a leash
They’ve been training them with gentleness for millennia
The dog is the paradoxical symbol of the evil and of the friendship that
we cannot encompass, because we don’t look into the mirrors of reality, but into the ones of hypocrisy
Dogs are poor creatures that don’t want us to make them live a human life
Just as we sometimes live dogs’ lives
What is the turnover in the dog food and accessories industry?
Purebred dogs, an absurd classification, the tool of the profiteers …
We are the mutts not them… when we force them to grow wild
Kill the street dogs and there will be no street left to the leash
Dogs hold our souls in, dreaming of the little bit of Unconditioned Caress…

A video I had not seen before  (made in 2008) covers the limited options available in Mexico City to provide some care for the street dogs.  Left unsaid, and much to the credit of Mexico City’s local government, there hasn’t been a case of human rabies in the Federal District in well over 50 years.   I was always amazed that the Health Department sent people door to door to inoculate every dog they could, including those that were technically street dogs, but had at least the good fortune to have someone claim to be their person.   Of course, old Canelo — a Chow mix living around the corner from me… sometimes… and at the corner newsstand… sometimes… and at the fruit market across from the newsstand… sometimes… was jabbed at least three times that I knew of.