(THIS ARTICLE IS MACHINE TRANSLATED by Google from Norwegian)
Next to my cafe table in Tbilisi's Meidan Square, a scruffy street dog is standing and licking the head of a microscopic cat. The fur can't be more than a week old, and every time the dog's tongue slides over the kitten's back, I'm afraid the carnivore will devour the whole animal.
But instead this happens: A young man comes out of an ice cream kiosk with two scoops of ice cream in a bowl. He places the bowl in front of the fur animals, puts his hands on their hips, watches them eat for a while, smiles and goes back to the ice cream customers – who have had to wait in the heat. The tourists look at the stage, take pictures. "Here we treat dogs better than we treat people," says my Georgian friend, Gocha.
I look around and see two other dogs circling around the cafe tables. One lies down at the feet of a man in a suit eating khachapuri (cheese bread). They don't seem to mind him. On the contrary; he reaches down between his legs and gives the dog a taste of his own meal. The other dances around, wags and barks heatedly at the guests. The waiter comes out. Now he's going to chase them away, I think. But no; in his hands he carries a bowl of water which he sets down on the pavement, right at the entrance to the restaurant. The dog happily licks the liquid. Over the next week, traveling through this warm wine country to the east, I will learn that Georgian street dogs do not need to lick newborn kittens. Because Georgian street dogs are never so hungry.
The recognition that animals experience pain must have consequences.
The street dogs are everywhere. In the capital Tblisi, in Kutaisi (the country's third largest city), in the mountain towns in the north of the country, towards the Caucasus. They move around in small gangs: a small snarling dog together with two large powerful carnivores and a thick labrador-like case. They are fed and petted too – and eventually I too want to have my hands deeply buried in dog fur. They put their forepaws in my lap, wag, drool. I don't realize that I share bacterial flora with the street animals; they feel clean and trusting. Happy? Yes, they seem happy.
The dog mystery
What about the people in this land on the border between east and west? In India, the dog catchers drive around in small trucks with large nets and catch them in droves. They are shot and burned. In Guatemala, the street dogs are chased and beaten with sticks. In China they are eaten. But here? Here the street dogs get ice cream and cheese bread. And a plastic chip in the ears. I realize that the key to the dog mystery lies there. I ask around a bit, and not long after I find myself in the post-operative ward at the dog center in Tbilisi. "The dogs are going to wake up from the anesthesia pretty soon," says a man in a hospital coat. And when they wake up, there is no way to carry the dog family on.
We exit the operating room. It smells like a dog: wet mouths with long tongues hanging out of the corners of their mouths, there are howls and howls and barks behind the bars. Around 250 country folk live here. They have been brought in from the streets for a full medical examination – and treatment if they need it. The boys are castrated, the thin ones are fattened up. In one of the cages there are puppies in a heap, it is impossible to count how many. In another: three dogs with three legs each. "We have a separate hot-line for dogs," says the hospital coat, whose name is Vakhtang Lomjaria and who is the head of the dog centre. They receive around 25 calls a year: about dogs that are injured, that look hungry, that are sick. Dogs that have fallen into holes or stuck their heads in fences. Outside the center are the emergency ambulances. 000 people work here, and that's just at this centre; because there are several. Here alone, the vets perform around 145 operations every day.
It has not always been this way, it turns out: In 2015, 50 dogs roamed the streets of Tbilisi. In the same year, Georgia was to host the International Youth Olympics, and thousands of foreigners were expected in the city. The authorities wanted to get rid of the beasts, as they have done in many countries that want to decorate the facade a bit before the world's eyes stick to them. But it didn't work out that way. Animal welfare groups screamed and organized petitions. So instead of mass murder, dog centers were created – fully funded by the authorities. "Before, the street dogs in Tbilisi were euthanized. Now, instead, we do everything we can to give them as good a life as possible. Whether it's in relocation, or as a street dog," says the director. They set aside ten days to find the owner; if no one comes forward, the dogs are put up for adoption. And here comes the special thing: If they not finds a home for the dog, the dog is sent back to street life. Dogs that are aggressive or too sick are euthanized. But: A committee of three people must agree that the dog is going to the eternal hunting grounds before the injection is given.
Morality and consequence
All over the world, animals are mistreated. Dogs, cats, laboratory animals, the animals we eat. And why should we really treat them well? Because animals also have rights, some would say. But the moral philosopher Peter Singer still believes that it is completely unnecessary to argue with rights when we talk about animals. It is the certainty of animals' ability to experience pain that makes it morally wrong to cause them suffering. "The question is not can they reason, But can they suffer?” as the philosopher Jeremy Bentham formulated it already in the 1700th century. He is considered one of the first defenders of animal rights, but is better known as the founder of utilitarianism and the greatest possible happiness for the greatest number of people as the goal of all things. Because when it is common to use the human capacity for reason to describe what separates us from the animals, we must surely use that reason for good. But just as important: Anyone who drowns a dog or sets fire to a cat is acting against their own humanity. Morality separates humans from animals, so if we inflict suffering on them, we are no longer human; then we too are animals.
In Georgia, the street dogs get ice cream and cheese bread.
I think of the rich country of Norway, of all those who throw away their cats on the way to Gardermoen when they go on summer vacation, and of the blown-up relocation centers run by volunteer zealots. There is no operating room for abandoned animals here, but in Georgia – which is 70th on the UN's list of human development, sandwiched between Iran and Turkey – dogs get a place in the budget.
At the dog center I ask the vets how many of them have taken in animals from here. All hands go straight up. One has sixteen cats and two dogs at home, another has taken in six dogs. A third has two. Only the director does not have animals at home; his son is allergic, he admits sadly. On the way home to the hotel, I buy cat food and eye drops. I have seen a mother cat with four little woolly kittens outside the door, the little gray one has a glued-on eye. It certainly seems that caring for street animals is contagious.
Aftermath: A few weeks later, it turns out that care is not the only thing that infects: My Norwegian doctor confirms the diagnosis ringworm: a fungal disease of the skin. She asks if I have been in contact with dogs or cats? My mind wanders to the at least 50 animals I've scratched behind the ear and held on my lap in recent weeks. "Well, maybe I've missed one or two," I reply.
Recommended literature/music about dogs:
- The romantic dogs / Roberto Bolano
- Hundene i Thessaloniki / Kjell Askildsen
- The Hound of the Baskervilles / Arthur Conan Doyle
- The dogs in Riga / Henning Mankell
- A dog's life / Arne Svingen
- Timbuktu / Paul Auster
- A dog's life / Jokke and the Valentines
