It’s certainly been chilly these past couple of mornings, and during the past couple of nights there have been some major gang wars going on at our soi. Our soi dogs have apparently gone crazy. Friday night we were woken up by this almighty noise, it was loud barking, howling and yelping and lots of GROWLING. What’s up with them?!

Is it a reorganisation of hierarchy, or has a new dog tried to upset the pack from our soi? And in the morning I walked past four of them lazing around on the pavement and I noticed that one of the dog’s faces was cut up and bloody, and the other was carefully licking the other dog’s ear with a kind of ‘there, there, it’s ok’ look on it’s face.

Bangkok is notorious for it’s abundant soi dogs, and you do get familiar with the dogs living on your soi. They don’t get in our way and vice versa. When one of them had puppies earlier this year, one of the shop owners down the road took me to see them and standing there were all the moto drivers cooing at them. The mum proudly nudging at her newborns.

But is it right to have all these stray dogs around? I know many foreigners find it distressing that these dogs aren’t cared for and are often riddled with disease. To me they always seem fairly content, and there seems to be a msyterious protective force in the city as you often see a stray dog with a cast on it’s leg, and there are always plates of food left around for them.

And there they go again, woof, woof, woof out there.