Decline of the Soi Dogs

I am not talking here about the excellent band by the name of The Soi Dogs Blues Band.  (They are thriving and are back playing the Blues again, on Sukhumvit Soi 11 on Thursday nights at Apoteka.)  I’m talking about the canine “soi dogs.”  A “soi” means a back/side street, and soi dogs are homeless and always looking for a handout.  They have all but disappeared. 

.

Our neighborhood used to be filled with soi dogs.  They would be around our place in the early mornings to beg food – often at the same time as the Buddhist monks on their alms rounds, soi dogs being no fools – and also in the evenings they would show up for handouts.  When I would straggle home from a late outing long, long after midnight, local soi dogs that knew me would get up off the street, stretch, and merrily follow me home where they knew I’d give them some scraps.  Waggly-tailed neighbors with big smiles.  Cosmic hobos with the wisdom of the streets. 

.

But they are gone.  The Great Flood of late-2011 disrupted all street life and the communities in the region.  Soi dogs started to disappear at that time (although cats did not, perhaps because their climbing abilities put them high and dry).  But even since the end of the flooding, soi dogs that survived started to vanish one-by-one. 

.

News reports started to tell of organized dog-napping operations, where stray dogs -- and even pets -- were rounded up and illegally exported to neighboring countries (the main one being that in which I once spent an unpleasant year over four decades ago).  Why were they kidnapped and exported?  Cuisine.  Dog meat.  Huge cargoes of closely-packed caged dogs were found by police – skinny, mangy and dying.  Apparently this black market demand for dog meat and the related supplier operations have continued to be quite successful, as the streets now have a conspicuous lack of soi dogs. 

.

Here is an investigative account of black market dog trading, Dog-Meat Mafia. Read the full article transcript.  But only view the video if you are strong of stomach, because it is not pretty.  Here in Thailand, the blame goes not only to the villainous traffickers and corrupt officials who expedite this trade, but also to blame are the assholes who are too cheap to neuter their dogs (and cats) and thus allow so many homeless and unloved animals to come into the world. 

.

May the karma of these ill-used soi dogs ever improve in their future lives.  If I actually believed in rebirth that would be a more comforting thought. 

.

-Zenwind.

.