Dogs in Uganda

This morning as I was walking to work, I stopped a man to ask if I could take a picture of him with his dog. He agreed, but unfortunately my camera didn’t. It’s too bad, too, because the dog was unique in a couple of respects. First of all, the dog was on a leash. Second, he was a recognizable breed, a German shepherd.

Most dogs I’ve seen here in Uganda would fall under the general heading of “yellow.” Until today I had never seen a dog on a leash and only very, very rarely with anything resembling a collar. Most of the dogs I’ve seen have been sleeping. I let them lie. (The picture here is from the Acholi Quarters.) I hear them barking at night and finally get the notion of dogs howling at the moon.

One time, I went with Peter to visit a client who lives in her aunt’s house. When we came in the gate, we met a dog, yellow, long and narrow. “Oh, you’ve gotten so fat!” Peter said to the dog.

Up in Ntinda, there’s a pet shop—a GIANT pet shop, it says, for all of your training needs. It’s about the size of, oh, my office at Christ Church, I suppose, with a few bags of nondescript kibble in brown paper and a few other things. No toys, no t-shirts, no personalized dog dishes.

There are some puppies in my neighborhood. I generally see them rooting through the trash in the little grassy area on my way up to the Life in Africa offices and internet café, flies often buzzing about their raggedy-looking ears. There used to be a lot more of them. I’m not sure I want to know.