Post #81: No Barking in Bangkok

1 Dec. 2023

“I care not for the religion of a man whose cat or dog is not the better for it.”

— Abraham Lincoln

During seven years of living in Bangkok, I’ve only heard a street dog bark on a single occasion, and that was too far off to ascertain what the trouble was. Otherwise, not one incident, despite a fair number of strays roaming the city. It suggests a heartwarming vision of happy Buddhist canines living on such friendly terms with their human neighbors that no causes for barking arise. The example may have spread, on this optimistic account, from the local temples, monasteries, and meditation centers, where it is indeed a point of principle to leave the animals unmolested—Vipassana centers in the U Ba Khin-Goenka tradition are particularly strict in that regard.

It’s a happy tale that I would like very much to believe, though I can’t say that I am especially partial to dogs. My only other experience with strays comes, it so happens, from the other Buddhist kingdom still in existence. The contrast could hardly be starker. In Bhutan I got waylaid by the village dogs all the time—snarling, vicious beasts that would run off with my shoes and attack me at night at the entrance to my quarters. The villagers treated them as one would expect elsewhere in the world, with robust shooing and shouting, and even more robust beatings. The rustic ways of the Himalayans, you might say, with their booze, their bows, and their big sticks (not to mention Drukpa Kunley); nothing to do with the urbane Buddhism of Bangkok. The dogs there get handled roughly, so they turn nasty; here they are left alone and treated with kindness, therefore they don’t bother anyone (piles aside). Cause and effect with hints of a Buddhist morality tale. As I said, it is a cheering vision that I would dearly like to believe…

What suggests at least a few cracks in this pleasing picture of harmony between the species is that Bangkok street dogs, like their cousins elsewhere, have a way of quietly disappearing overnight, or getting disappeared, as the case may be. Now you see them, now you don’t. It is their piles, incidentally, that give you the best sense of whether they are merely roaming another part of the barrio, or whether they have gone, or been taken, away. A single pile, spread by unsuspecting soles, goes a long way in a neighborhood, and since there is nobody to pick up after the roamers reliably, hygienic considerations, and not so much objections to the dogs’ presence itself, may be a big factor behind their disappearance. Though not always a very tidy city at first glance, to say the least, Bangkok is quite a cleanly place when one looks a little more closely, and certainly concerned with not adding fecal notes to air of an already dubious quality.

Perhaps the exiled canines get relocated to some great doggie sanctuary somewhere upcountry. Considering how graciously, all things considered, Thailand has been giving cultural asylum to misfits from around the world these past fifty years, especially from the late Occidental parts, the rosy view is not altogether implausible. Alas, it seems more likely, much as one might like to believe otherwise, that the surplus quadrupeds are transported at the public expense to the land of doggie dreams somewhere above the clouds or in another dimension. In sum, just where they all go is never explained; only that they have gone is apparent to anyone willing to ask himself inopportune questions about their whereabouts.

The few stragglers that linger here and there on the streets are noticeably lethargic and unlikely to make much trouble on that account. I’ve wondered whether they might also get tranquilized along with their food and water, but given their evidently advanced age, their spotty health, and a diet consisting almost exclusively of rice, they may not have enough energy to make drugging necessary. Would it be bad faith, I wonder, to speculate about whether one sees and hears so little of unruly dogs because they are the first to be taken wherever it is that Buddhist dogs go upon their retirement from living on the street? Sad to say, a pliant population cannot be taken for a sure sign of a placid and docile disposition, whether in Thailand or anywhere else; not so long as the troublemakers may be getting subtracted from the sample by whatever method of silencing is found most expeditious at a given time and place.

That one never sees dogs in groups here is probably also pertinent. The quiet ones who seem to get tolerated longest are evidently not your typical alpha-hounds, but rather the betas or gammas of the pack. And the group dynamic may be what brings out the most aggressive displays: remove that source of incitement and aggravation, and perhaps even the more dominant types can be made to keep their peace. (How far the lessons of canine life apply beyond its narrow confines, I dare not say.) For my part, as I’ve said, I much prefer the comforting myth of harmony to the harsh realities of urban management. Until I am confronted with the bitter truth head-on, I will hold on to the heartening hope that even the shaggiest vagabonds on the streets of Bangkok may get treated with enough loving-kindness to bear out the power of the Buddhist Teaching. May it be so, may it be so.