photo - PAP/Jacek Bednarczyk
When I was growing up in the UK, I used to look forward to the summers when I would be shipped off to Poland to spend a couple of months with my grandparents in Warsaw. Landing at the bunker of an airport which was Okęcie back in the 1980s, one memory really sticks out, and I’m not talking about the austere look on the face of the Polish border guard who would scour my passport for the right entry visa before giving me the all clear some ten minutes later. I’m talking about my babcia and dziadek, my grandmum and granddad, who would come to the airport in their new red Skoda 120 with their dachshund Karol to meet me on the other side of the customs barrier.
Karol, or Charles in English, was a dog to be reckoned with. For a start, he was older then me, and thus immediately garnered my respect. For a wire-haired dachshund he was in fact the tamest possible four-legged creature in the entire city, and I would relish going out for walks with him. In the early nineties, he was joined by Fred, yet another wire-haired dachshund we had brought over from the UK when we moved to Warsaw and didn’t take back due to the UK’s draconian rabies laws before the invention of the pet passport. Fredzio and Karol were the ultimate four – or eight-legged – duo, and they even sat with my gran in the next door seat on the plane to Chicago when she flew to visit my aunt and uncle, as well as my cousins in the USA. In other words, they were treated like royalty, not just as four-legged companions.
And I know that our family was not the only one to treat dogs as if they ruled us all. They would often get good food, more attention than this six-year-old running around the place could hope for, and certainly greater trust than I would get. After all, they were allowed of the leash when going to the local market, but I was always under the watchful eye of my granny! But then I would remind myself that Karol is older, so he’s allowed to do what he wants. He made it to seventeen before he died, that’s around 85 in dog years. Not a bad count by any standards…
Over a decade later, when I moved to Krakow, I was surprised and delighted to see that the city hosts an annual dachshund parade. Although I don’t particularly like the idea of dressing up dogs, or any animals for that matter, for the amusement of us humans, memories constantly come back of how Fredzio and Karol were very much part of the family. But while Poles’ relationship with dogs is well-documented, and by and large dogs are well looked after in the country, there is a darker side, unfortunately. Year in year out there are horror stories of how dogs are inhumanely treated, even going to the extent of one story I remember of someone in the country even making sausages out of stray dogs and selling them on, without telling anyone where the meat had some from, obviously. A trip to the local dog rescue centre can be a harrowing experience, although my family has stuck it out and we usually have at least one rescue dog at home.
But despite the fact that Polish dog pounds are bursting at the seams, it seems that Poles still like to have dogs, and here any trip to the local park will prove that dogs are doing well in Polish society. Of course, one problem still remains, and that is one of a stinky nature. But even here, Poles are finally cottoning on to the fact that it is a good idea to clean up after your dog, and a number of cities across the land have imposed bylaws which force you to clean up the muck.
The latest stats speak volumes, although of course it would be impossible to count all of them. However, it is believed that over 50 percent of households in Poland have a dog, in comparison to the US, France and Australia with 33 percent, and the UK with 27 percent. The actual numbers of dogs varies wildly, with figures ranging from 7 million, through to 10 million, although some estimate the number to exceed 14 million pooches.
I do begin to wonder, though, why it is that Poles have such a fondness for these four-legged creatures. Of course there’s the company, but maybe it could be because Poles themselves are very much a closed society, have low trust in other people, and so they tend to put their faith in dogs rather than in others? I don’t know, but maybe it would be interesting to do a sociological study into why Poles have such close relationships with them, whether they be good or bad…