Bogota Blogger

This is a very dog-friendly city. I don’t think there’s an apartment building anywhere in the city where there would even be a question about whether or not dogs are allowed–they just are.  People take their dogs into shops, on the patios of restaurants, just about everywhere.   A guy I work with brings his dog with him to school, on the bus, and it hangs out in his classroom all day.

Like every big city, this means there’s a problem with dog crap, too.  It’s not as bad as Paris, but it’s still something you need to look out for.

There are tons of dog-walkers in the city, because so many people are looking for anything at all to do for money, $17 US per month to take his dog out six days a week for three hours (with a few other dogs too, of course).

There are also lots of street dogs in Bogota.  They tend to be pretty friendly, and you can see them all over…they wander in and out of tiendas and sleep in the middle of sidewalks when it’s sunny.  Last Easter I stopped into a church in Chapinero where Mass was going on, and there was a street dog sleeping in the middle of the aisle right in front of the altar, while about 1,000 people were saying prayers along with the priest.  Nobody would ever think anything unusual about that.

The street dogs adapt to their environment pretty well, it seems to me.  This is often a crowded and chaotic city, but they learn how to cope.  For one thing, they know how to stop for red lights, and wait for the green to cross.  

This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 25th, 2007 at 7:02 pm and is filed under Daily Life in Bogota, Colombian Personality. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.