A Little Observation… The Many Animals of Thailand

I can’t say that everybody has the same attachment to animals like the people in the United States. A lot of people have cats and dogs but they don’t seem to have the same compassion and affection towards them as we do back home.

There are so many animals that don’t have homes here, and it makes me really sad because they are so skinny and they look like they haven’t eaten in a couple of days. Maybe I just feel like that though because I’m so use to seeing people pet their cats and dogs and taking them out for walks in the neighborhood or at the beach. What is the point of having a cat or dog if you don’t show it affection? Sometimes I do see Thais holding their tiny dogs, but they don’t pet them, they are just showing them off for all of us to look at.

Yesterday, when I went to the market I saw this dog chewing its own collar and was trying to get the collar off, and the dog was wearing clothes! The dog clothes here even have holes for the tails (but this dog didn’t have his tail through the hole)…you know, I don’t know why they put clothes on their dogs, it’s already hot enough here!

And then before, at a different food market there was this dog walking around with a hot dog in his mouth….which I think fell on the ground from one of the street food stalls and the dog must have taken it. It’s funny, because I thought it was the dog’s tongue hanging out of his mouth, but it was just a hot dog.

Oh, and the dogs here are sometimes soooo annoying. When I was staying at a guesthouse here they barked so loud that I woke up it seemed like every five minutes to the sound of them barking. It doesn’t happen anymore because we moved to a new apartment. Though I’m glad the barking stopped, it actually didn’t affect me very much because I could sleep through it, but my Aunt is happy because she woke up all night!

One other thing that I have noticed about Thailand is that there are chickens and roosters walking around everywhere. What’s weird about is that you’ll be walking near a bush and all of a sudden this big blur pops out of it and it looks like it’s about to attack you. Then you see what it is and you’re like “Oh yeah, that’s the same chicken that tried to attack me yesterday.”

Even though the cats and dogs mostly don’t look healthy and don’t have homes, I am still happy that there are animals here because I love animals and I like to pet the stray animals that we see if they look friendly…and even if they don’t look friendly because I just have this attachment to pets and I like having them around me.