There are dozens of shelters for rescued dogs in Cairo, most of them on the Giza-Saqqarah axis. I visited six shelters, some of which also had cats and other animals, and one private cat shelter. According to the official announcement, there are up to 15 million stray dogs in Egypt. But as one well-known animal protector stated, the census should be done officially and in Egypt nothing about animals is official. One thing is certain: there is no animal welfare law in Egypt.
In Egypt, street dogs are beaten and stoned until they are either immobilized or dead. As I write this, I read about puppies that had been killed by throwing boiling water over them. Dogs are being hanged. Many dogs get hit by cars, either unintentionally or intentionally. Cats are more often allowed to be alone, but many are destined to be mauled by dogs or some viral disease turns fatal. Sometimes dogs are also mauled by other dogs.
In November, there was a dog in the Faisal neighborhood that had suffered from scabies for a long time and was in bad condition. In a Facebook group animal protectors were looking for an urgent placement for the dog. Before the place could be found, the dog was found dead. He was literally hacked to pieces. So it was not enough to burden this outcast to suffer from a horrible disease, but also he had to die brutally.
I found a dead cat in the shelter; it had died unnoticed. The cats in ESMA shelter are surrounded by dogs and the commotion must be very stressful for the cats due the noise. Shelters, of course, suffer from all kinds of resource shortages, and occasionally animals occasionally die, but there was something particularly tragic about that creature that had sneaked out of the world.
In addition to 2,000 dogs and a few dozen cats, at the Animal Protection Foundation (APF) shelter there is also a monkey. The area is huge and very well organized and maintained. Obviously, there are the best resources of the shelters I visited. APF also does educational work, e.g. schools and recently they had an open day.
Almost all the dogs I saw in shelters were friendly and social towards people. Of course, not all dogs get along and bickering dogs have to be in smaller kennels. However, they often have friends who can live in the same cage. Of the purebred dogs in the shelters, I saw mostly golden retrievers and German shepherds, the latter of which are particularly beautiful. They have a well-featured head reminiscent of a Belgian Shepherd and they are all social too.
Most street dogs are baladis, more or less greyhound-like, with short hair, large erect ears, and a tail that often curls over the back. The Baladi still has the same appearance as the Anubis statues of ancient Egypt. Although the Egyptians consider baladis to be mongrels, the genetic test of a baladi, who got a home in the USA, concluded that the breed has not mixed with other breeds. Of course, this too will change when abandoned dogs of other breeds interbreed with the baladis.
One of the reasons for the overcrowding of shelters is that the animals never are euthanized. If the animal is in pain, it is given pain medication and a natural end is expected. Even angry dogs are not euthanized; as I was writing this, there was a petition in a Facebook group to place a dog that bit a person in a shelter before it has to be killed. It is of course difficult for a Finn to understand this mentality.
Marian often takes on cases that would have no chance of surviving without human help. The day before my visit, there was supposed to bring a paralyzed dog from 400 km away to the shelter, but the dog died before that. Shortly after my visit, a dog was brought to the shelter, and from the surveillance camera, it appeared that a man who had come out of the small shop had hit him on the back with a heavy object so badly that the dog was injured. The dog soon underwent a surgery and there is hope that the another surgery will possibly restore her ability to move. The money for these operations is collected from donors.
Noha said that her heart bleeds because she is not able to accept all the animals in need that are offered to her. Some other shelter keepers also used the exact same expression. Almost all shelters have a constant struggle for existence. Donations are received not only from Egyptians, but especially the USA, Canada, Germany and UK have a record in this.
Every foundation has got a website or Facebook page or both. At least one of them is necessary for getting supporters.
Most workers in shelters are teenagers or young men. The work is heavy and naturally dirty. Injured dogs also have to be moved and carried. Of course, workers must not be afraid of dogs, because sometimes dogs can come to blows and they have to be separated. All the employees I saw seemed competent and hardworking. There were no female employees, but there are mainly women in the management of the nurseries and some of them also participate in practical work.
So some shelters collect animals only in the hope of donations and then do not take care of them. One animal protector stated that sometimes animals seem to be safer on the streets than in shelters. The rents for shelter properties are high and you can say that they are a business for some landowners. At one point, one landowner got fed up with his tenants and drove them away threatening them with a machine gun. I also heard about two another cases of terminations of rentals that happened while writing this.
These terminations are catastrophic for the shelters, because cages and canopies have been built for the shelters and suddenly everything should be dismantled and taken elsewhere, besides the animals of course.
In Egypt, the price of dog food has doubled in a short time. While writing this two shelters I visited have announced on their Facebook pages that they cannot feed their dogs every day, and they cannot continue for much longer if they do not get help.
I just came back from Egypt and ran into this article and this mirrors every sentiment I had for the poor strays there. Thank you for writing this and spreading awareness. I will be looking into adopting a stray in the near future.
Your information about Islamic views is incorrect. It is haram to neglect/mistreat animals including dogs. It is not permissible in Islam to hurt any animal. Fact check yourself before you loose your credibility
I typically have my Wyze v2 sitting outside but the last couple days I have been getting interference from somewhere and I have been hearing low pitched voices speaking. These voices are not coming from the area. They seem to be coming from the camera itself. My cam is not hacked. I have 2FA enabled. I changed my account password as well as my router password. Still getting them
Today I decided to bring the camera inside and see if that stopped the voices. It did not. I placed my cam into my closet and left my home for a few hours. I live alone. The area I live in is pretty quiet
Its a male with an English accent and he is commenting on what I am doing. I am sitting to the right with a flashlight. I was tying my shoes and and playing with a stray cat that hangs out in my yard. Notice there is an electronic whistile prior to the man speaking, like he was tapping into the camera or the camera feed
If your networking environment is behind a router/firewall with proper security (strong password, reasonably recent device) there is no real reason to believe you were hacked - especially with the evidence shown above.
On December 3, almost three months after Israel began its relentless bombing of Gaza, two dogs defied all the odds and walked seven kilometers south of the besieged enclave to reunite with Saeed Al-Er, a man who has been their only family for the past several years.
The 53-year-old Palestinian, who once provided a home to 400 dogs and 100 cats, has been forced to abandon his shelter and relocate to the south in recent months due to the ongoing Israeli offensive in Gaza. But even in adversity, Saeed is rescuing, feeding, and providing first aid to stray animals.
Keuleers added that an Egyptian organisation had sent two pallets of animal food and medicine packages to Rafah but there were thousands of trucks waiting to be inspected at the crossing, a process that takes weeks.
But deep down Saeed knew the dogs would have had spread out due to the unabated bombing. During the same visit, he also found out that his residential area had been targeted in recent days and reduced to rubble. His home, too, was no more in a livable condition.
Intercut with the race prep is the plight of a Santo Domingo stray pup who is starved and wounded, living on the streets. When Michael tosses him a meatball during a rest at a race transition, the dog starts following the team through jungle downpours, river crossings and ocean paddles, serving as both motivator and mascot. He even has his own Lassie moments, communicating danger to the team along the way. They dub him Arthur for his stoic, regal demeanor.
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