The more I see of people, the more I like dogs

Around ten years ago, in a nondescript garden along Suez Street in Nasr City’s Seventh District, a stray dog gave birth to a litter of puppies. As the newborns grew, their wobbly movements and soft cries began to draw the attention of larger, more curious creatures. Children.

Walking home from work, as part of a daily ritual of checking in on the area’s street animals, I came across a group of kids playing near the garden. They had taken the puppies from their mother. After tossing them about, they left the tiny dogs in the middle of the road, unaware of the pain they had caused.

I stepped in, explaining how these puppies couldn’t survive without their mother. How they needed food. How landing hard on the asphalt could cause bleeding. My words seemed to land until a girl, no older than six, tilted her head and asked in earnest, “So they’re real?”

It was a moment of reckoning. The child had assumed the puppies were no different from toys: bags, dolls, decorations. Her question revealed not cruelty but a void, a failure of adults and institutions to cultivate empathy for the living beings sharing our streets.

Fast-forward ten years, and a very different story unfolds. In the village of Mahalla Marhoum in Tanta, Gharbia Governorate, a video begins to circulate online showing a husky tied to a pole, visibly distressed, convulsing. Villagers had beaten it before a local veterinarian, Hamdy Haggag, administered a fatal injection. The dog, we’re told, was “rabid.”

But there was no urgency in the onlookers. No attempt to alleviate suffering. Just laughter, jeering, and camera phones.

The clip drew a swift backlash. It forced open a long-simmering national debate around the treatment of animals, especially dogs who live and die on Egypt’s streets. In one widely shared video, a local woman is told by a journalist that the dog looked sad as it died. She responds with scornful disbelief “Sad? A dog can be sad? Seriously?”

It took me back to that little girl in the garden. To the disbelief that animals might actually feel. But this time, it was something far more callous, and far more deliberate.

Not 'rabid'

Veterinarian Dr. Mohamed El-Sawwaf challenges the official justification for the husky’s death. “There were no visible signs of rabies,” he told Al Manassa. “If the dog had truly been rabid, no vet would have dared come near it.”

Rabies, he explains, is a viral disease transmitted by mammals, often through the salivary glands. It’s typically associated with dogs due to their proximity to humans, though wild animals like wolves or lions can also be carriers. Symptoms are aggressive and unmistakable. Once symptomatic, the disease is fatal, and strict quarantine measures are mandatory for any creature—human or animal—that may have come into contact with the infected.

Despite the seriousness of the disease, Egypt maintains no central database for rabies cases or the population of stray animals. Estimates vary widely, ranging from 10 to 20 million street dogs and cats.

As for the husky, El-Sawwaf posits a more mundane cause of aggression. Dogs may bite when they’re scared, provoked, or responding to pain. The humane response? Behavioral assessment by specialists, limit interaction to one care giver, and only if rehabilitation fails, relocation or, in rare and necessary cases, euthanasia. “But even that,” he notes, “requires proper facilities the public sector currently lacks.”

A symptom of a deeper violence

Said Sadek, a political sociologist, sees in such incidents a grim indicator of something broader: an uptick in societal violence. The brutality shown to animals on Egypt’s streets mirrors what he calls “a general erosion of empathy.”

Social media groups focused on animal welfare are replete with evidence—videos of cats thrown into rivers, dogs beaten with sticks, donkeys tortured by passersby. In one particularly disturbing case, a young man in Menoufiya Governorate casually tossed a live cat into the Nile as a friend filmed him smiling.

Sadek draws a straight line between this cruelty and Egypt’s broader human rights deficit. “We don’t have a culture of rights. Not for animals, Not for people,” he said. “And when violence becomes normalized in one sphere, it bleeds into others.”

He also identifies a class dimension. “Some justify cruelty with resentment. ‘I’m starving and you care about a dog?’”

Research backs his concerns. A 2018 report suggested that cruelty toward animals may serve as an early warning sign of violent extremism, particularly among individuals with psychological or social dysfunctions. A 1986 study found that those who abuse animals are more likely to engage in interpersonal violence. Another study, published in 1999 in the Journal of Interpersonal Violence, found that 70 percent of people who mistreated animals also committed violent crimes against humans.

There’s also a gender dynamic at play. “We define masculinity by violence, by domination over the weak,” Sadek says. “And the weakest are often the animals we pretend not to see.”

From poisoning to prosecution

The Egyptian state’s approach to stray animals is marked by blunt force. In many governorates, the preferred method of population control remains poisoning, with toxins that seep into soil, water, and food chains.

Dr. Sadek contrasts this with practices elsewhere. “In other countries, local authorities feed strays. They tag and monitor them. We kill them with public funds.”

He also calls out the hypocrisy of Egypt’s digital policing. “The cybercrime unit goes after people posting dance videos or jokes, but ignores those sharing footage of sadistic animal abuse.”

There are exceptions. In Luxor, a construction worker who livestreamed himself killing a kitten was arrested after public outcry. In Giza’s Omraniya district, police eventually took action against a man who tied up three cats and denied them food, after a woman’s viral video exposed the abuse.

But these moments remain rare and reactionary.

A fight for dignity

The harm inflicted on street animals doesn’t stop with their bodies. It leaves a trace on the environment, too. Dr. Hesham Issa, an environmental and climate science expert, warns that the poisons used to kill dogs can contaminate crops, water sources, and agricultural land, especially in rural areas.

He advocates for a different model: state-supported partnerships with NGOs and local shelters, aimed at relocation, vaccination, and long-term population management.

Mona Khalil, head of the Egyptian Federation for Animal Welfare Associations, has spent decades fighting for these alternatives. She’s weary. “We’re chiseling through stone alone,” she said. “The government imports poison, pays salaries to kill animals, and refuses to let us receive donations to do our work properly.”

What’s more, she says, the state often undermines their efforts directly. “We find animals we’ve vaccinated, neutered, and marked with ear tags dead from poison. Dogs, cats, donkeys, horses. Even birds and caged zoo animals. No one is spared.”

“It’s an embarrassment,” she adds, “for a country with one of the world’s oldest civilizations, where animals were once sacred, not to have a single comprehensive law protecting their rights.”

Khalil also criticizes religious and educational institutions for failing to include compassion for animals in their teachings, and the media for inciting fear and spreading misinformation about street animals.

Legal framework falls short

Egypt’s Penal Code does contain provisions for animal protection, but few consider them sufficient.

Article 355 states that anyone who kills an animal without justification—whether a workhorse, livestock, or draft animal—faces up to one year in prison and a fine of up to 200 pounds. Poisoning animals or aquatic creatures like fish carries the same penalty. If the act is committed at night, the punishment escalates to hard labor for three to seven years.

Violators can also be placed under police surveillance for up to two years. But these sanctions are rarely applied, and almost never enforced at scale.

Photojournalist and animals rights activist Angele Samy calls them “shockingly weak.” She wants Egypt to look abroad and study how other countries use strong legislation to create cultures of respect toward animals.

“The aim isn’t punishment,” she said. “It’s coexistence. A shared life, where we don’t harm one another just because we can.”

Living with pain and compassion

Opponents of street animal advocacy often argue, “If a dog bit you or someone you love, you wouldn’t be so kind.” But many animal welfare workers have already paid that price, yet kept going.

I’ve been scratched and bitten twice. Once by Raad, a large black street dog who jumped up to greet me, leaving a light gash on my shoulder. Another time by a kitten barely the size of my palm, whom I found trapped without food for three days. She bit me out of sheer terror and hunger. I bled, she ran, and I searched for her afterward, hoping she had survived.

None of it has changed how I feel. If anything, it has deepened my belief: these creatures feel fear, joy, pain—and love. Just like us.