I’ve been thinking a lot about stray dogs
Stray dogs are foreign to me, are they dangerous? I’ve been taught that loose dogs are dangerous but these seem to be beautiful and somehow well behaved even though they have had no training. Sometimes you see them in small packs, walking about rummaging through the trash, trying to find something.
They always look like they are saying “I’m going to get me some of this and some of that” whenever they look at whatever food you have in your hands. “there are so many smells here.” “Do I look cute enough for you to give me free food” I guess all food is free to dogs.
I wonder if domestic dogs realize what a hard-earned meal is like. Do they know what it means to catch something and for it to be effectively theirs? Even humans have to work for their food (eventually). Maybe food tastes better to stray dogs. Maybe life is better for stray dogs.
I wonder what they do in the cold, do they all huddle together or do they find a warmer place or do they just sleep under the snow and hope that they don’t freeze to death? And how long does it take for a stray dog to die without eating, and what is the success rate of stray dogs vs. stray humans. Who gets more food in a day? Have stray dogs given up on life the way we are led to believe that stray humans have, or do dogs really feel as though they’re getting the most out of life because every day is about what they do, and not what they’re given.
I guess begging is natural and shameless in a dog’s nature, but not in a human’s, because I’m sure that the stray humans of the world feel shame on most days. I would, at least for a while, at least until I got over it. Is it wrong to refer to the homeless as ‘stray’?
