Athens is 'cleaned' of its dogs

ATHENS — Locals here will tell you of a time when dogs ran wild and free in the streets. The animals roamed the narrow, winding roads and alleys and the hills and vales of Athens with impunity. They went where they wanted, slept where they wanted, barked when they wanted.

It was about three months ago.

Beyond the new super highway that surrounds Olympic city, beyond the expanded subway system and the fabulous state-of-the-art stadiums that have sprung up everywhere, one of the biggest changes the 2004 Olympics has brought to Athens is a significant reduction in the at-large dog population.

It isn't talked about much. Newcomers would have no way of knowing that dogs used to be ubiquitous.

"Oh, but they were," an American who lives here told me. "Up until just recently, dogs were everywhere. When I'd go walking in the hills I'd usually have a pack of five or six join me. They're friendly for the most part and I'm a dog lover, so I was happy to have them. But they were all over. They'd sleep all day and bark all night."

According to the expatriated American, the dogs were castoffs. "People would get their kid a dog and then get tired of it," she said, meaning the dog.

So out goes the dog — cast adrift into a country that doesn't have dog-catchers or an organized humane society.

In dog, that translates to one thing: total freedom.

According to an article in the Athens News, a Greek newspaper written in English, less than three months ago Athens had a homeless dog population in excess of 15,000. "In the whole of Attica it is around 25,000," reported the newspaper, referring to the southern part of the Greek mainland that Athens and its nearly 4 million people anchor.

"Most (of these dogs) were dumped by owners who no longer wanted them, or they are the progeny of owned dogs," said the newspaper. "While in other countries stray dogs are picked up and placed in shelters, from which they are rehomed, reunited with their owners or put to sleep after a period of time, in Greece the concept has not taken off; locals have no interest in adopting street mongrels."

They do feed them from time to time, however, and some people leave out bowls of water so the orphaned dogs can get a drink.

Not a perfect situation, but workable . . . until the Olympics approached.