The Brown Dog with No Name –
With Two Awesome Survival Strategies
Summary
Urban stray dogs are amazing animals that display awesome survival strategies. While eating a hamburger sandwich outside a sports complex in Puerto Princesa City, Palawan, Philippines, a brown dog amiably sat right in front of me. Since its demeanor was meek, I gave it two small pieces of my sandwich. After eating, the dog abruptly gazed at me with deadly stares – the body and ears stiffened, the tail wagged wildly, and the mouth opened, showing its sharp incisor teeth. Surprisingly, the dog suddenly turned around and ran away quite fast. Intrigued? Read the blog to find out the reason.
1. Context: Stray Dogs in Urban Setting
Stray dogs are amazing urban survivors (Figure 1). Admittedly, I often despise them as a nuisance and filthy animals that interfere with my walking regimen. As part of my health goal of maintaining an average of 10,000 daily footsteps, I often walk around either late noon or at varying times in the evening.
I barely walked 5,000 steps after an hour, however, when I felt terribly hungry. My first and only meal for the day was at around 1000. Hence, I finally decided to go to a nearby food stall outside of the sports complex. While sitting at the table, I ordered a cheeseburger sandwich and a liter of water.
As the owner brought my foodstuff, a brown-colored male dog from inside the stall followed her. I would call him as ‘the brown dog with no name’. I paraphrased this label after the title of a song by America (a famous rock and roll band) – A Horse with No Name. Out of the blue, I just had a writer’s hunch that this brown dog would be my day’s blog topic!
2. Strategy 1: Ran Away from Trouble
While slowly eating my cheeseburger sandwich, ‘the brown dog with no name’ amiably sat right in front of me. Obviously, it was begging for spare food. It was so near to me that I took its picture (Figure 3) at a relatively close range. Literally, we were gazing at each other eyeball-to-eyeball. Since its demeanor was meek, I shared two small pieces of the sandwich that I was eating. I opted to be kind; after all, it didn’t look threatening.
Suddenly, its behavior changed: the eyes projected those cold, deadly stares. Simultaneously, the dog’s body and ears stiffened, the tail wagged wildly, and it angrily opened its mouth wide, showing its sharp incisor teeth. Instinctively, I grabbed my walking cane to ward off its impending frontal attack.
To my surprise, though, the dog just turned 180 degrees. Then, it simply ran away quite fast in a sprint. While trying to comprehend the situation, I heard a gentle female voice from my blind side. “It probably got scared of the other dog that’s why it ran away,” said the stall owner.
When I glanced behind me, I saw a black, aggressive-looking dog with saliva drooling from its mouth. It was partially unleashed by the owner, who was casually following behind. It looked like a half-breed or a mixed breed of an American Pitt Bull Terrier. Pitt bulls are among the breed of dogs that may be genetically predisposed to aggressive tendencies. Given their muscular and stocky build, they have been bred for guarding livestock – and sometimes even used for dog fighting.
3. Strategy 2: Appeal to Humans for Nourishment
As I continued my conversation with the stall owner, she relayed that ‘the brown dog with no name’ did not belong to her. It turned out in the end that it was among the stray animals roaming around the city. She corrected my initial assumption that she was its owner. I thought so earlier as it came from inside the stall and genially interacted with them.
The stall owner added that ‘the brown dog with no name’ frequently visited their food stall. Since it did not behave unruly toward them, they usually gave it free left-over foodstuff. As a bonus, ‘the brown dog with no name’ also received some foodstuff from the benevolent food stall customers.
Any stray dog needs adequate body nourishment to survive in a harsh urban setting. Of course, it can always rummage for left-over foodstuff from the trash bins and garbage dumps. But that means competing with other stray dogs – and even slugging it out with pesky cats and rats! Hence, its nourishment strategy of begging for free food from the stall owner (and eating customers alike) by being meek and seemingly harmless is a remarkable feat.
4. Re-thinking Survival Strategies
My encounter with ‘the brown dog with no name’ implies that survival in the open is not simply a matter of being strong or projecting a macho, aggressive behavior. Exposure to urban environmental elements (such as extreme heat, pouring rain and pollutants) is already hard enough. Competing with other bullying stray animals is even more challenging. We often despise these stray dogs as simply nuisance and filthy animals. But we also need to admire them for their incredible resilience – and an array of cunning ways – just to survive on a daily basis. Overall, ‘the brown dog with no name’ as a stray animal, has demonstrated two ingenious survival strategies. First, it got free meals for body nourishment by being friendly (displaying meek behavior) with the stall owner and other eating customers. Secondly, it displayed a good strategy for self-preservation when it immediately ran away from potential trouble, knowing that the black dog could easily overpower him. It might have heard the line in the American balladeer Kenny Rogers’ song titled Coward of the County: ‘Walk away from trouble if you can’.
- Fascinated
- Happy
- Sad
- Angry
- Bored
- Afraid
