Egypt’s once-reviled street dogs finding popular acceptance
Stray dogs roam in almost every Cairo neighbourhood, with the government saying there are around 15 million of them.
Street dogs in Egypt are finding popular acceptance after centuries of social and religious stigma.
Stray dogs roam in almost every Cairo neighbourhood – lurking in construction sites, scavenging through rubbish and howling nightly on top of parked cars.
The government says there are around 15 million of them.
They bite some 200,000 people a year, according to the World Health Organisation (WHO), and spread rabies, one of the world’s most lethal diseases.
Yet after centuries of stigma, the street dogs of Egypt are finding popular acceptance and, along with it, surging grassroots support.
That includes adoption and medical care, as well as spaying and neutering to keep them from producing more puppies on the streets.
Volunteers armed with giant fishing nets and tranquiliser darts embark on regular missions to catch, vaccinate and sterilise dogs before letting them loose.
These efforts are making inroads against the prevailing government policy of extermination by poison.
“I’ve seen a major shift … people are seeing a value in strays,” said Karim Hegazi, 32, from his veterinary hospital in the upscale Cairo suburb of Maadi.
Mr Hegazi spends his days in his clinic taking care of animals long considered a menace in Egypt.
He said he is no longer treating just foreign dogs, but also a growing number of adopted “baladi” dogs, the once-reviled Egyptian street breed.
Mr Hegazi said they often reconcile their religious beliefs and love of dogs by keeping them in grassy yards or on rooftops.
Egypt’s upper and middle classes have increasingly adopted Western-inspired ideas of dog ownership.
Pet hotels, cafes and grooming emporiums are sprouting up in major Egyptian cities.
Fuelled by the rise of social media, enthusiasm for Cairo’s dogs is “moving beyond snob culture”, said local advocate Amina Abaza.
A Facebook forum for vet recommendations exploded into a community of 13,000 pet lovers trading stray rescue stories.
Dozens of new shelters co-ordinate adoptions online, flooding Instagram feeds with images of abandoned puppies.
What has surfaced online is spilling into the streets.
The General Organisation for Veterinary Services, an arm of the agricultural ministry, routinely sends authorities to kill strays by scattering poison in streets overnight, according to a dozen activists and residents.
They said they have woken up to find carcasses piled on kerbs, or sick dogs wailing in distress.
“It’s a horrible way to die,” said Mohamed Shehata, founder of Egyptian Vets for Animal Care (EVAC).
It is the country’s first spay and neuter programme, also based in Maadi.
The government organisation did not respond to questions about its policy.
But in a recent report, it described street dogs as a “time bomb that threatens our children”, and defended the “merciful killing of dogs that are harmful to people”, citing Islamic law.
After the French invaded Egypt in 1797, Napoleon Bonaparte’s troops spent two nights shooting all of Cairo’s street dogs because of their raucous noise.
Major dog eradication campaigns in Egypt stemmed from Cairo’s explosive growth in the early 1800s, when dogs became scavengers dependent on the city’s ubiquitous mounds of rubbish, said Alan Mikhail, professor of Ottoman history at Yale University.
As part of a public hygiene push, authorities trapped, shot and poisoned dogs en masse.
These days, a consensus is emerging among experts that “poison is not a real solution to rabies or to overpopulation”, said Mr Shehata.
A toxic substance called citrinin is used to kill off dogs, but most of it ends up seeping into soil and cement, poisoning gardeners, waste workers and children playing in the street.
Culling street dogs does not stop the spread of disease either, he added, as more than 70% of the stray population must be vaccinated to attain herd immunity.
Mr Shehata described his group’s spaying and neutering efforts as “a more humane, scientific, and effective way” to regulate the country’s strays.
His group kicked off Egypt’s first mass rabies vaccination drive this month, inspired by the WHO’s goal to eliminate human deaths from dog-transmitted rabies by 2030.
A cacophony of yelps and barks filled the air as terrified dogs were trapped in nets, then injected with vaccines.
Neighbours woken by the noise watched from their balconies in bewilderment.
The method may appear ruthless, but Mr Shehata insists it is for the best, and keeps the dogs rabies-immune for a year.
Volunteers also spay and neuter strays at the clinic.
The dogs are dropped off where they were caught, with a notch cut in their ear to show they have been sterilised.
The model is being replicated in at least five central Cairo districts, where local groups say they have seen dog populations stabilise or decline and the threat of rabies wane, although the government does not make rabies infection figures public.
Vigilante hunters still scatter poison in dog food and request government exterminators, said Rasha Hussein, a Maadi resident who runs a vet training centre outside Cairo.
Residents now co-ordinate meal deliveries and medical checks for ear-tagged dogs that have become a mainstay in their areas.
Just five years ago, EVAC volunteers were chased out of the neighbourhood.
Mr Shehata said his teams have treated some 10,000 stray dogs over the last few years.
Egypt’s push follows successes in similar developing countries.
Animal welfare proponents hope these gains can spark a worldwide movement.
Turkey’s cities, which once promoted systematic slaughter of street dogs, now provide strays with government-sponsored medical evaluations, sterilisation and shelter.
Indian provinces historically ravaged by rabies, where Mr Shehata trained, have driven down death rates through co-ordinated campaigns.
But leading veterinarians say Egypt’s efforts still lack state funding or a legal framework to protect animals, meaning the future of the country’s street dogs remains uncertain.
“We will do our best to reach our targets,” said Mr Hegazi while carrying his next patient, barking and snorting, into the exam room.
“But it’ll take a much longer time.”
