The Soi Dogs

You’ve hear of Alley Cats and Slum Dogs, but here we have “Soi” Dogs. A “soi” is an alley or little road . . . and a dog (no metaphor here) is a real four-legged yelping, barking, pooing, peeing, growling, mating, howling furry “man’s best friend”.

Let me back up a bit. There are on-the-inside dogs which have collars full bellies and yards. They live on-the-inside of the gates; they have owners. Then you have the on-the-outside dogs . . . strays, if you will. They run in packs and live on-the-outside of the gates that surround the homes enclosing the on-the-inside dogs. They run up and down the neighborhood alleys doing what dogs do – they are the Soi Dogs. They seem to like our little street best, hanging out to instigate all kinds of howling matches (and I mean full-on midnight choruses of seemingly 100’s of dogs!) and dog fights that the on-the-inside dogs can’t wait to get involved in. You see . . . the ‘on-the-inside’ life is kind of boring compared to the Soi Dogs’ . . . it’s kind of like a banking nerd longing to be a motorcycle bad boy.

It’s a bit crazy when the “worlds collide”. Mostly noisy . . . but when the on-the-inside dogs get a chance to escape (you can tell as they are wearing a collar or have a piece of lead rope hanging from their neck), they frolic with the Soi dogs, regardless of the throngs of puppies the inter-mating produces (no spaying or neutering here) or the bloody gashes the inter-fighting causes. There’s one little guy (see photo) that lives next door, I call him “Shorty”. Every time the Soi dogs come by he runs out of his yard to sniff them and invariably ends up getting bitten on the face spending the next 10 minutes rubbing it in the dirt writhing in joyous dog pain.

As the grass is always greener, the Soi dogs like to pretend that they live in real houses. One neighbor keeps his gate open and the Soi dogs let themselves in and hang on his porch. Regularly, they file out into the alley to cause trouble – dump over a trash basket, get into a fight, or follow a monk back to the temple . . . . aha this is the secret of their survival.

I have a theory that the monks feed them, and that is how their kind thrive! As we pass our neighborhood temple on morning walks, we see many more Soi dogs grinning at us from their protected position inside the temple entry way. They never really bother people – just terrorize with their noise, poo, and garbage rummaging. Some of them are more stoic and poised in their Soi status – see photo of the dark grey one with a beard we’ve named “Tolkien”. However, there are others like “Owen Meany” with a damaged leg and permanent limp . . . all he ever does is growl viciously with teeth bared at all other dogs, Soi or otherwise. None of them pay any attention to humans . . . the most you’ll ever hear directed at you is some kind of puffing half-bark coming from the females who may have puppies somewhere. I guess people are not mean to them as they don’t seem to be afraid of us . . . is that a good thing?