The streets of Taipei can be a hard place to walk on if you have a soul. There are a plethora of stray dogs in every neighborhood. It's very common for people to get a puppy from the store, then when people see how much work it is to have a dog, they just take it out and abandon it.
Some people will leave food out for the stray dogs, and parks and night markets seem to be full of people who like to drop just as much food as they eat. However with all the typhoons, it's not a nice life for the dogs. Also as mentioned before, the traffic fatality rate is horrible here, and that extends to stray dogs getting hit and clipped by cars. Although the first thing that stray dogs seem to learn is being able to understand traffic lights.
Just this morning I was saddened to see a newly abandoned dog that was soaking wet and shivering. It followed my dog and I on our morning walk, and even followed us home. I'd love to help out, but in the past i tried having another stray dog but my dog didn't like having another dog in the house.
Perhaps that dog will become one of the lucky ones like the one in the picture. This dog is another stray in the neighborhood, and the owners of this clinic one day put out a little mat for the dog to lay on, and now have even given the dog a little jacket to wear.
Stray dogs also suffer from discrimination. Many Taiwanese don't understand dogs as they don't have much experience with dogs, so they can misinterpret a dog's actions. I've seen plenty of times a stray dog wanting to be friendly with somebody, but they think the dog is being aggressive. As such many people in Taiwan don't like dogs because they had some bad experience with a dog in the past. However i'd take a guess that the dog in question was not a stray dog, rather a pet dog somebody just lets roam the street. In my personal experience stray dogs are much friendlier and will even come up to people and do tricks. Makes sense seeing how their whole well being is dependent on strangers feeding them. While the pet dogs that people allow to roam the streets, can be very vicious, regarding the whole neighborhood as theirs.
My dog does try to be an ambassador of sorts. Not only getting people who hate dogs, to like her, but also showing people that stray dogs are not bad, they just need a chance. However people don't like to take in stray dogs. I was also saddened a few nights ago when two guys on scooters stopped to play with a local stray dog, and that dog hopped on one of their scooters. I was hoping that they would just take that dog away and give it a home, but no such luck.
On a different note, black dogs are considered the best color in taiwan. Mainly by men as they are supposed to make you the most virile if you eat them. Granted people don't really eat dogs any more, but black "Taiwan dogs" are still well respected, especially by those outside of Taipei.
However one friend of mine is black dog racist. When young she had an incident with a black dog and since then hates all black dogs. If there is one, she will walk across the street to avoid it. However I don't know if i should scold her for being a black dog racist, or commend her for not hating all dogs (as most people who have been through that experience would). Perhaps the best thing to do would to make it so that all black dogs are racist against her as well, but who has that kind of time.
