Petting strays is nice and all, but you still need to be careful

I remember when I first moved to Thailand. I saw all the dogs on the street and me being a dog-lover, I tried to approach all of them as if they were my own family's dogs. This is a bad idea in most parts of this part of the world because they are not some lost dog looking for some help to get home, they tend to be feral, territorial, dangerous, and perhaps rabid street dogs. I was chased once by some dogs I was just trying to be nice to and thankfully I didn't get bit.

While we focus on treating as many dogs as possible in this area, we still have to approach most dogs with a feeling of trepidation and caution. At the end of the day these animals are still capable of causing great harm to you and anyone else.

That was no the case with this fella of course but since I didn't know him, I still was very apprehensive about him approaching me where I was handing out food to other dogs. First and foremost I have to presume that all dogs that I do not know are feral because in Thailand a lot of them are. Then I approach by appealing to their foremost motivation: Food. Even after we establish this part of things it is still a good idea to let the dog approach you, not the other way around.

While it may seem odd in the west, many or maybe even most of these dogs have been mistreated most of their lives by humans because there are just so many stray dogs in Thailand that they become a nuisance and make a mess everywhere that they go. This could probably be solved by people using more creative methods of waste disposal but more often than not, the garbage pickup here is simply plastic bags lumped up on the side of the road. All manner of critter can get inside of these bags and a dog's preferred method is ripping them open and making a real mess of things.

of course this fella ended up being a real sweetheart and we hope that he will be there again when we return next week. We would like to get him into the system and make sure that his bloodwork is ok and that he is parasite free.

Even though my particular encounter with this friendly doggo has a nice ending to it, there are plenty of stories of people, foreigners especially, getting mauled by dogs in this country because we have the very untrue assumption that all dogs are friendly. For the most part they are here as well but you should never presume that. If a dog shows its teeth you need to back out of there immediately. Don't run because they are a lot more likely to chase you if you do that. Just back away slowly and let him bark at you. Most of the time they aren't actually going to do anything and they aren't really looking for a fight anyway.