Hi. I was looking at this post as I was writing about the attitude of dog in Italy as my assessment. I am dealing with that summer holiday massive abandonment of dogs so it triggered me reading. yet that text with title 'attitude towards dog are not universla' irritated me a lot. I know it's a bit off the side issue but gotta say i need to say.

what frustrated me most on that post was the attitude that loving and caring the dog is of 'affluent' country - clearly indicated EU and US - and (as i interpret)those savage poor little countries don't care coz it's hard for them to survive. What a Eurocentric point of vieW!

i am personally from south Korea where there is quite a different view on dogs. It is not because we are poor and suffer to live. i want to highlight there are DIFFERENT culture and tradition and not neccesarily SAVAGE. For example, in my cultural background, dogs were not considered no more than a domestic animal, like hans and cows. They had different roles in everyday life. Hence, as we do eat beef and chicken, there were cusine developed based on dog meat. It had it's own advantage on well-being and the traditional way of life just same as beef and chicken so what is wrong with it? the cusine was even introduced in traditional medical writings explaining these advantages - dog meat contians high protein which helped Koreans to overcome summer heat and regain energy to work in their aguricultural life. There are 3 days in summer that is indicated to the beginning, the middle and the end of the summer(also the hottest) and the cusine would be consumed especially those days. This from pet-lovers point of view might seem still brutal and shocking. However We still would respect their lives due to the influence from Buddhism, which teach to respect every living thing around us.

besides, concpet of the pet was only introduced with the introduction of 'Western' culture and nowadays there are a lot of pet population in Korea. so in recent 20 years there has been a conflicted ideas about the cusine. Yet I only see it as the part of the culture, just ANOTHER way of living.

Hope this opens up another perspective on dogs and that said, there could be another interpretation on this abandonment topic but for the moment, I have to agree that it only shows the irresponsibility of pet-owners in Italy.

innnnnah - you make a very good point, and I agree with all you say. Every living thing on this planet has a right to exist, and whilst many species need to eat others in order to survive, I don't see that any one is more or less worthy then the others. As long as the treatment is humane whislt alive, and respect given afterward, what is eaten is of little relevance.

My observations from living in Southern Italy have indicated to me that most Italians keep dogs for protection of property and to make as much noise as they can. The neighbors across the street from me had a little dog that they kept chained up and this dog would cry and bark all night because it was lonely. It drove me nuts. One night I put a sleeping pill in a bit of raw meat and fed it to the dog. He slept for almost a whole day
So did I!
You would also see a lot of dead dogs on the side of the roads and they just lay there until they disintegrated. One day the road crew was putting down new white lines on the road and painted right over a dead dog
Now as for eating dogs, most Americans find this as repulsive as eating horse meat and they eat it in Italy and also some places in the U.S.
As for me, I'll eat meat from a steer.thank you.