My neighbour has a dog. It is very cute. It's kind of like a German Shepherd, but smaller. It may be a pup, because I'm sure it has grown since we first moved here. It doesn't bark a lot and is generally a very well behaved and lovely doggy. Oh, and it lives on the garage roof. Yes, your read that right. It lives on the top of the garage. Most of the time anyway. With many Portuguese houses having their garage roofs decked out all nice, as a place to sit and enjoy the sunshine, it seems to be perfectly normal behaviour and also somewhat sensible to make the best use of your flat garage roof as some kind of terrace. Some people prefer to make a more functional use of the space with perhaps a strategic placement of a washing line. My neighbours have exactly such an arrangement, however, I have yet to see them using it. Perhaps (and this is purely guesswork) it is because the cute little doggy would come up the steps onto the roof and chew his way through all the nice clean clothes? Perhaps the dog likes to spend time up on the garage roof because from this higher vantage point he can see out over the neighbourhood a little, keeping check on which other doggies might be trying to invade his territory? Regardless of the reason, it is enormously cute that he's there every morning when I open my front door, looking down at me, and I can look up and greet him with a hearty, "Olá cão!"
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| Please, No Doggy Presents! |
Wait a minute! Other dogs might invade his territory? Well, not quite. For a start, the steps up to the roof would be completely inaccessible to any stray doggies. However, I'm sure my little rooftop canine friend does not see it that way, since the other main place to keep your dog while you are out at work during the day is apparently on the street, meaning that at any time an enemy dog could come walking past, and heaven forbid, venture down the alleyway into what he would clearly perceive to be his territory! Seriously though, letting your dog roam the streets is (or so I'm led to believe) completely illegal, although it does seem to be surprisingly tolerated. My instinctive reaction to this tolerance was at first for fear of the safety of my children but there are other implications too. The inevitable result of having dogs roaming the streets the entire day is that they leave little (or sometimes not so little) presents in the road. On the plus-side, I did notice this convenient poop-bag dispenser (pictured) while I was out walking the other day. It is placed just outside a small shop presumably for the use of customers that tie up their dogs (to the ring, also provided) while they shop and come out to find an item that was not on their shopping list! It's very sad that there are not a lot more of these dispensers, and in fact, this is the only one I am aware of. On the other hand, dogs that roam the streets on their own all day are not very likely to use these bags anyway owing to a distinct lack of opposable thumbs! Whichever way you slice it, there simply doesn't seem to be the culture of cleaning up after you dog here in Portugal as there is in England. And it's a great shame. Anyway, moving on...
Another neighbour's dog seems to spend it's days sleeping on the crossroads just down the street. He's an old dog. His eyes are clouded through and when he walks about he walks slowly and laboriously. He doesn't walk much though. As I've said, he sleeps. Usually in a shaded area, in the gutter, by a garden wall. And as the sun travels across the sky through the day he'll get up and walk over to the other side of the crossroads to a different shady spot. His owners leave out food and water for him by their gate. Perhaps he likes sleeping out on the crossroads. Or perhaps there simply isn't room inside the owners house or garden to keep him? Who knows for what reason his owners think that the best place for him to be is sleeping out on the crossroads? I had in incontinent cat once, but that's another story altogether, and so back to the dog blog.
Most people do what seems to me to be the most sensible and decent thing and keep their dogs inside their gardens. This for the most part is absolutely fine, except when one of the yappy little blighters spots me walking past their garden through a slit in the fence and the consequent sudden cacophony of canine excitement makes me jump six feet into the air! No, joking aside, it is also a great shame that many Portuguese gardens, especially here in the suburbs, are small and paved, which is not ideal for keeping a dog. Even in larger gardens, not many folks have grass as it is difficult to look after in the dry heat of the summer, probably more so if you ave a dog running around on it. Furthermore, I hardly ever see anyone out walking a dog. The Portuguese have a reputation as a nation of animal lovers, so I do sincerely hope that the reason I do not see people out walking with their dogs is simply because I do not go walking at the same time of day or in the same places as people like to walk their dogs.
Maybe I have to get through any preconceived ideas about dog culture here in Portugal. I have yet to see any kind of harm being done to, or indeed by, a dog since moving here. I mean yes, the roadside "presents" are certainly not nice. And some people keep their dogs in places that, to my decidedly English brain, are strange places, but I'm sure they have their reasons. But is it really that bad? Well, my rooftop friend has (admittedly uncharacteristically) just spent over an hour and a half barking his blooming head off at an unknown intruder. I hope it was the ginger cat that keeps sneaking into my garden...
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