100,000 Dogs Abandoned a Year in Italy

(It's vacation time. Don't abandon your dog. He would never abandon you. Bring him with you, don't leave him at home!)

A recent Italian bestseller by Diana Lanciotti contends that 100,000 dogs (and cats) are abandoned each year in il belpaese -- the beautiful country, averaging one every 2 minutes (700 a day). The majority (60%) of the canines are abandoned during the summer months of June, July and August when Italians migrate en masse to beaches, often for 30-plus days, and often to places that are not dog-friendly.


Italy has long had a problem with stray dogs, and officials put the number of randagi -- stray dogs, at 200,000. In the countryside it is not uncommon for landowners to "bait" (i.e. poison) food and leave it out, in order to kill the strays.

Protecting strays is becoming a popular cause, often pushed by Italian socialites. Recently, Paolo Berlusconi (left; Silvio Berlusconi's brother) enlisted himself in the struggle, on an advert reading: "If you abandon him, you make us sick."

The case for protecting strays is two-fold. Certainly, the campaigners' foremost concern is the protection of the animals, who are sadly abandoned. The second concern, however, is related to human lives. In the past decade alone strays have been implicated in 40,000 traffic accidents, resulting in 200 human deaths.