Street Dogs

One of the many immediately recognizable differences between Taiwan and Thailand are the Street Dogs .

The first week I was in Taiwan I made a comment to some other students that had studied in China about how Fat the street dogs in Taiwan looked. I walked through the FuRen Campus on one of the first days I was in Taiwan it was also one of the first days that the students were on campus. Everywhere there were groups of students preparing dances for a year opening show, and I saw some students feeding the dogs. This was heartwarming and it reminded me of the street dog that used to run around Zhejiang University campus with clothing and shoes that the students would buy for and put on the dog. The dogs on the Zhejiang Campus were very skinny and mostly small, so I was wowed when I saw the Fat and tall dogs that ran down the streets of Xinzhang. I was told that in Taiwan many people will buy puppies and when they start getting too big, the owners will drive the dog far away from the house, somewhere that the dog can't remember the way home and let it go.

Since arriving in Thailand, to Khao San rd, a major tourist destination of Bangkok I have noticed that that street dogs are skinny when compared to the dogs in Taiwan. Also they strangely are missing large chunks of fur, the only dog in Taiwan I noticed missing hair was missing it in a thin bad around the mouth where it had been muzzled and the skinniest street dog I saw was "Three Socks" a three legged dog that lived near our hostel. The dogs also seem dirtier in Thailand than they were in Taiwan. More to come on the issue of street dogs.