Two Polish Lowland Sheepdog brothers in Italy - now about to head to France
Thursday, 19 March 2009
Italy's 500,000 stray dogs
The papers here today are full of two truly horrible stories - the first is of a 10 year old boy mauled to death by stray dogs in Sicily and a second similar story concerning a 24 year old German savagely attacked by dogs while walking on the beach and now in critical condition . According to the morning papers there are at least 500,000 stray dogs in Italy with the vast majority of them in the south - Calabria. Puglia and Sicily. Every summer thousands more are simply abandoned as their families go off on vacation and leave them by the side of the road. With local authorities short of funds there is simply no money here for the establishment of dog pounds or for looking after abandoned dogs.Add to all this a culture where hunters simply leave their dogs in the wild or poison them when they are too old to be of any further use and you have a major problem.
2004 - We sell the farm in Scotland and move to the warmth of southern Europe. 2 lively Polish Lowland Sheepdogs - Wilf and Digby - our patient and comical companions. After a year in Provence we head to Italy to restore a hilltop Roman watchtower . Following an unpleasant 'housejacking' in late 2009 we set off for new adventures in South West Franceto get to grips with a large and exceedingly rickety old farmhouse. Empty nesters life after the violence of Italy has a gentler tempo. Digby passed on from piroplasmosis in May 2010. HIs brother, despite being diagnosed with cancer and having become blind ,soldiered on for another two years. Bob and Sophie joined us in 2013. Bob passed on in 2019. Sophie enjoyed the fresh air in Scotland after we returned in late 2022 but ran ahead in the summer of 23. This blog records all those little things about living with dogs that are too unimportant to make it into a diary but which make life, life.
The papers here today are full of two truly horrible stories - the first is of a 10 year old boy mauled to death by stray dogs in Sicily and a second similar story concerning a 24 year old German savagely attacked by dogs while walking on the beach and now in critical condition . According to the morning papers there are at least 500,000 stray dogs in Italy with the vast majority of them in the south - Calabria. Puglia and Sicily. Every summer thousands more are simply abandoned as their families go off on vacation and leave them by the side of the road. With local authorities short of funds there is simply no money here for the establishment of dog pounds or for looking after abandoned dogs.Add to all this a culture where hunters simply leave their dogs in the wild or poison them when they are too old to be of any further use and you have a major problem.
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