One month later: After a popular movement successfully overthrew Turkey's government, the newly elected president Dog has been indicted in a 'pets and treats for military contracts' scandal.
The revolution will not be brought to you
By Xerox in four parts without commercial interruptions
The revolution will not show you pictures of Nixon blowing a bugle
And leading a charge by John Mitchell, General Abrams, and Spiro Agnew
To eat hog maws confiscated from a Harlem sanctuary
The revolution will not be televised
Wait until you hear this: here in Serbia we had students going on these long multi-day protest marches between cities, 120 to 200kms. And we have a sizable community dog population, strays if you will. Wherever these marching groups went, they kept getting community dogs join the “caravan” and walking with them for days. Eventually they would have ten or more dogs walking among the students. Quite a few of them got adopted. But also, these were very long distances and the dogs kept over-extending themselves, so people would get organized to pick them up and take them back to their home city. It is amazing that this ancient “caravan” instinct is still so strong in them.
Thank you so much for sharing, that’s really cool and inspiring. We can only hope our instincts kick in before it’s too late and the rich take everything. Keep fighting the good fight! Much love from a protestor in the United States
I guess street doggos just feel lonely and lost without direction, see a herd of humans all headed towards one direction, and figure they must clearly know where they're going, so better to follow the ones that know than get left hungry in the dust
Oh, the cutest thing is that most were neighborhood dogs - they had their territory, and their people recognized them on FB groups and came to fetch them. In that case they wouldn’t be adopted because they had caretakers. And people give them the funniest names, there was a Stalin.
This is such a weird phenomenon. Some of these neighborhood dogs reach very old age. I personally know one who has been there for ten years. And via FB groups I know two who lived to 15. And most of them are fat. When they aren’t at their territory, local people will put out notices on FB and they are usually found and returned.
Of course, there were proper stray dogs that no one recognized and claimed but students knew which city the joined them and still returned them to that city if they weren’t adopted.
There's been more than a few instances of police dogs biting back, even they can break through the conditioning and brainwashing to see them as aggressors.
In September 2011, on the occasion of a striking policemen's union marching in the centre of Athens,[10] Loukanikos, according to eyewitnesses,[9] was "initially confused" between two opposite sides both of uniformed policemen but, when the riot police contingent attacked their striking colleagues, the dog sided with "those who were being attacked."
Learning about riot dog Loukanikos was maybe the most interesting thing I never knew about until now. Amazing on so many levels. Loyal until the end. Makes you wonder what the dog was thinking or even capable of thinking.
I have a riot dog theory.
My dog loves small, kind women. LOVES them. Will fight for them against aggressors on the tv. I think the riot dogs are like him and pick the side with the girls.
I've seen videos where these dogs get super attached to the protesters as if they were their pack and will even get between the cops and the protesters to protect the protesters. Its super legit.
Since 2021, legally they're granted "living being" status, essentially making them people. You can go to jail for up to four years if you mess with a stray cat or dog in Istanbul.
one riot dog was confused during a police union strike. Didn’t know how to react with uniformed officers on both sides. Ending up siding with the striking cops when the other side attacked them.
Canine behaviorist here, this isn’t quite what is happening. Dogs don’t have a Pac-Man mentality.
They are however, social creatures and form close bonds with people who treat them well and do not like people who treat the people they like poorly.
If you are nice to a dog and someone is mean to you, the dog will not like that person.
Just to extrapolate this, there was a study done on over 2000 dog packs in several different countries. Of all the dog packs observed none of them had more than 10 members, and none of them stayed in the same pack for longer than a week.
This is different to wolves who can have a pack of over 100 members and can sometimes stay in the same pack for their entire lives.
I know that most people aren’t really gonna care about this difference, but it is important to note. Dogs do not have a pack mentality nor do they have a sense of hierarchy within a social structure.
There’s no such thing as an alpha in dogs either.
In fact, there’s not even such a thing as alpha in wolves.
In further fact, there is no such thing as an alpha in any predator. That is a prey animal feature. Like deer.
Sorry, I know that nobody cares about this really, but I felt like this was an appropriate time for me to mention it and hopefully dispel some misinformation about dogs and wolves.
When I visited Istanbul, the dogs were attached to neighborhoods not people. They would escort you through very politely.
Apparently they are genetically distinct from non-Istanbul dogs too, having been accidentally bred over thousands of years to not chase moving vehicles or children. They were super cool to see!
And lately, the Turkish government has been trying to exterminate the street dogs. So, this post has a bit of a double meaning to it that might not have been intended.
Yeah I loved this. You'd get a dog or a cat joining you for a while, and then eventually you reach a certain street which is clearly the edge of their patch.
Basically, the chase instinct was bred out by accident. Because being a nice neighborhood stray was more advantageous, dogs that behaved would get better fed/not trampled by horses or hit by cars, or shot. So, Istanbul Street dogs don't chase, while strays other places do
I can't find it either now! It was a genome research study that I read in 2017 - 2019 (I remember because I was on Twitter a lot then). I will look more and update if I see it again.
When I was in Greece studying with a bunch of other history students, we somehow attracted two dogs who began following us everywhere and would run up and bark and snap at people who got near us.
My instructors said to leave it because the authorities would blame us if we acted like we owned them, but I couldn't take it, they started snapping at some woman and her kid who had groceries and I ran up and grabbed them by the scruff and pushed their heads down and yelled at them.
After that they *still followed us* but if I went "HEY!" they'd stop what they were doing and run over next to me. I trained them in like...10 seconds to listen to me, lmao. They hung out with us for a few days.
El Negro Matapacos is a Legend!!! <3
Hail to the Riot Dogs around the world!
We should all herald them for all of time!
For they stand with the people!!!
I saw that dog (or one that looked just like it) wait at a crosswalk for the light to turn green, then cross the street and get on a bus, all by himself. Istanbul street dogs are something else man.
To be fair, there are MANY, many dogs and cats living the city life without pet parents. They are properly taken care of by the community and mainly lay in the sun while the fisherman feed them (not a single doggie looked deprived in the least when we were there and I believe the city vets even check in on them regularly but a resident might know more about that than me). Most likely this one photoed is looking for snacks or is like, what da, all these people are suddenly taking my nappy spot, oh well, I'll just wait with them, they seem cool.
Yes. I was there a few years ago. They have feeding stations in public areas. You put a few coins in and select cat or dog and food is dispensed into bowls. In one park there was a line of cat houses. People come by in the morning and give them food and fresh water.
We were told that the dogs and cats belong to everyone. The animals appeared healthy.
We also went to that cat park. It was one of the highlights of the trip. I absolutely loved how the city cares for them. And while we aren't dog people, I actually was quite taken with how well-behaved they all were. Not a single one was ever mean or barked or chased us like some unruly pets we have experienced in our neighborhood. It was truly refreshing.
Fun fact! In 2010, Chile experienced a major social, political movement led by students demanding free education. A street dog, later given the name, Negro Matapacos, was seen attending every protest and protecting protestors from police brutality.
Animals are truly amazing and we don’t deserve dogs!
Read more here: https://workingclasshistory.com/blog/negro-matapacos-chiles-riot-dog/
What a beautiful doggo. Someone make him (her?) President. They’d do a much better job than Erdogan. This doggo is the real deal - the ErDOGan to useless Erdogan.
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u/LoudImportance 15d ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riot_dog