Once, our grammar professor mentioned to us that Moscow was filled with feral dogs: roaming the streets and alleys, sleeping in the metro. But by the time we came the dogs were all gone: the city had rounded them up, shooting or poisoning the majority of them. While this is sad, the dogs could have been carrying disease (rabies springs to mind) and could potentially harm domestic dogs. There are of course contrary arguments, and the methods used may not have been appropriate, but here the main point is simply that there are no longer dogs roaming the streets of Moscow. Now, anyone who has done the program knows that the first book we read is called Bears in the Streets (1), the title of the book stemming from the author’s observation that many Russians believe Americans believe that there are bears in Russian cities roaming around. While the only bears in the street I have seen are advertisements for Masha and the Bear (Маша и Медведь, a cartoon) and one in a zoo, as in all cities there are still some wild animals around. For example, squirrels, muskrats, birds, harmless little things. For me, the third is the most important, as anyone who has read my St. Petersburg post knows, and looking for them will cause many of my encounters with other animals. In particular, dogs.

The birds in Siberia are totally different from those in Moscow, so a high priority upon arriving in Ulan-Ude was to locate some: Azure-winged Magpie, Daurian Redstart, Red-billed Chough, and such exotic types, which here are even common. Regrettably, the city of Ulan-Ude is not a renowned birding location, and on our first day when we toured the city, I got precisely one new species for my life, called in birding terms a “lifer”. For perspective, I was expecting in the range of 50 lifers for the trip, so this was not an encouraging start. However, from the bus and at our stops I also noted an abundance of feral dogs; individuals and even groups of 3-4. In fact, in an iconic moment a delirious Amelia asked if a larger grey dog was a wolf.

The next morning, Ian and I set off walking in order to look for birds. I intended to reach the river but couldn’t cross the necessary street, so I wandered to the back of some church, where I found a place to cross the road. But first I decided to look around the scrubby little trees that adorned the tan sandy grounds. I found a Dusky Thrush, which was only the second reported on eBird for the entire Buryatiya republic, but that has more to do with under-coverage (i.e. lack of birders reporting to the website) than rarity. Insufficient time remained to look at the river, so we set off to our homestay. As we left, we saw two sleeping dogs huddle against one of the bushy trees in the fine sand.

A few days later, Ian and I meandered down to the river, this time with the aim of finding shorebirds, as I had staked out some habitat as ideal for shorebirds the previous evening. We did find a few plovers, a multitude of Common Sandpipers, and one gorgeous non-piper, a Long-tailed Rosefinch. But the birds were the less memorable part of this trip. The more memorable part was the dog.  Shortly after having seen the Rosefinch, a tiny skinny black dog appeared. More than anything, this poor little dog probably deserved pity, but I am, to be perfectly honest, terrified of feral dogs; I think I was scarred by the passage about the mad dog in Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God. In any case, as soon as it got within three feet of me, I panicked a little and darted behind Ian, and we started to walk quickly away. However, it quickly became apparent that the dog was following us: when we walked, it walked behind us, and when we stopped, it would walk ahead a little, then stop and look back. I was very jittery, and Ian kept assuring me it would soon leave, but it wouldn’t quit. Once, when it had stopped a little behind, we tried taking off as fast as we could, and thought we had lost it for a minute, but lo and behold, a few minutes later there it was. Getting desperate, I tried yelling at it, but that did nothing. We were preparing to move away from the river, and when we crossed the street, we thought for sure it wouldn’t follow, but a minute later, to quote one of my beloved books as a child, “out popped Paleo wolf, looking for leftovers” (2). But we were in a homestay, were leaving in a day, and could absolutely not try to domesticate this dog, as happens to the wolf in the children’s book. I was certain we couldn’t have it come all the way to the homestay, and was beginning to panic; what if it tried to dart inside. But we still had one major road to cross, and after that road we finally lost it.

More than likely, the little dog, possibly even a puppy was completely harmless, and, in retrospect, I was overreacting a little. However, it does allow for a little interesting reflection on what is a wild animal, and certainly shows something about me. I set out looking for wild animals (birds), and found feral dogs which in a sense are not wild and in a sense absolutely are. Furthermore, the fact that there are dogs on the streets illustrates one of the differences between modern Moscow and other cities in Russia. And now I can say I went all the way to Siberia and the wildest animal I saw was a dog.

1 Dickey, Lisa. Bears in the Streets: Three Journeys Across a Changing Russia (2017). New York: St. Martin’s Press.

2 Brett, Jan. The First Dog (1988). Orlando: Voyager Press.