Shan Ding Lu

The quality of life for a dog in Taiwan depends entirely on it’s owner. That is no different from most places in the world. It just seems that the range of peoples attitudes to dogs has greater extremes than the culture in which I grew up.

At one end of the spectrum are the pampered poodles. These are the lap dogs you see groomed, scented, clothed and sometimes even with a colour wash. There are plenty of this category here in Taiwan. You see them with their owners almost everywhere you go. These are the lucky dogs of Taiwan.

Then there are the dogs who wound up with owners that just don’t care or don’t know how to care for them.

One such dog lives next door to us. I caught him here in front of his cage during his monthly wash. For the rest of the month he is caged at the back of the garage and keeps fit by barking; He is a fit dog! I do not know what purpose this dog exists for our neighbours. If it were for play, work, security or even eating I could understand. But it simply eats, barks and defecates.

One of the problems is that there seems to be very little public policing of stray dogs. It is common to find a small pack of mangy stray dogs living off street scraps. There is certainly no local registration of dogs.

There are common old black dogs and the mottled local dog as well.

But to see a good variety of cared for dogs you need to go to the Cultural Centre park in Kaohsiung on a Sunday afternoon. Here you will find pedigree dogs and proud owners strutting their stuff.

And dogs doing what dogs will do.

For more dog photos visit the Cats and Dogs album in the photos section.

If you click on any picture you should see a slide show of all the pictures in full resolution.

Tags: Taiwan, Uncategorized //