Hmm...I guess that sounds more like the title of a thesis than a mere blog posting. Maybe I should rephrase it: most people in & around Zakamensk seemed to have a different view the role of domestic animals in their lives than I, or many of the Russians I know.
I've been doing my best to withhold judgement, and accept it as just part of a different set of cultural values from my own, but at times that proves difficult.
Fortunately, people were amused by my child-like fascination with the throngs of animals that wandered around town at all hours. While I didn't come across traffic jams caused by massive herds of sheep & cattle in the street to the full extent I did in Kyrgyzstan, I was granted many an opportunity to wait in an idling car as heifers engaged in full-scale shoving matches with their owners in the middle of the street, in hopes of Team Brawn scoring one against Team Brain this time...
I guess I've never spent much quality time on an economically functioning (i.e. not a small family project with no interest in profits), so I couldn't speak about what level of personal attachment people have for their livestock in those instances.
My only basis of comparison at all, now that I think about it, is the apartment I rented in New York while at Bard. I lived in a cozy studio above the garage of a family who was very much involved in 4H projects. For that, they raised goats, pigs, chickens, and kept around the occasional duck to populate the pond. If I recall, the kids (two teenage girls who'd been raising livestock their whole lives) gave every single animal- including those they planned to eat- names and paid them personal attention.
While most people in Khamney, Zakamensk, etc, didn't seem especially interested in the emotional well-being of their stock, I saw no outright animal cruelty, either. Nobody beat, kicked, or starved an animal, as far as I could see, nor was there any killing without a specific purpose. Albeit, many animals died for the purpose of serving as food for humans. As my pictures have also shown, they let not a meaty organ from the slaughtered beast go to waste- an efficiency level I applaud them with for not only stomaching each and every organ, but thoroughly enjoying it piece by piece as well. It's rather humbling to consider for a finicky American like me.
What I also observed is that in the village, most any domestic animal that people keep has an occupation, or reason to kept, as it were. My host's cat, for instance, spent much of his time prowling around in the basement managing the mouse population there. Dogs are often on-call watching chickens and other small stock against potential predators. They primarily live outside & stay in barns, sheds or dugouts for shelter against the elements.
For me, keeping dogs outside all the time feels a bit strange & sad, mostly 'cause my beloved golden retriever, Linzy, who was with me most of my childhood was very much a member of the family who went most everywhere and did everything with us. It seems people here don't generally take the time to socialize their dogs much. Whenever I showed a dog any attention, as if to very cautiously coax it to come over, people always said, "don't do that- it bites!" Needless to say, whenever I saw feral dogs there (and there were a ton!) and I was alone, they always fled timidly from my beckoning, and never showed a sign of aggression towards me at all.
With domestic dogs (i.e. those with a name, a reliable source of leftovers and a dugout to sleep in) I had a bit more success. Again, when I was alone in the front yard with my hosts' dogs, I ever-so-slowly and gently extended my open-palmed hand forward to let them have a sniff and know I came in peace. After a few minutes of sniffing me out, they each let me pet them on the head. After a bit, Bovik decided he was ready for a new activity, while Lucas was positively transfixed by the patting. He had originally belonged to a neighbor who abandoned him after moving away and died before anyone could contact him about the dog. Poor Lucas wandered around the neighborhood looking for scraps for a few weeks before discovering my hosts' house, making fast friends with Bovik, and effectively moving in. I give all this background info to explain that it's quite likely poor Lucas had never experienced affection or overt kindness from a human before.
Pretty much overnight he went from being skittish and anxious to being energetic, friendly and blissfully happy. Granted, in his happiness he also took to jumping up on me -as a small terrier mutt, he didn't have the might to knock me over, thank god- and getting mud all over my legs & pants. People kept saying I had some sort of 'magic touch' with animals, though I argued all I did was show him a little love, and let him reciprocate in kind :) The poor guy had also never had a bath, and not a haircut/brushing all year, so I took it upon myself to release him from the dirty-dreadlock shackles, and brushed him down till he was practically silky to the touch. The piles of fur on the lawn were enough to make a dog hair shirt for the most high-maintenance of masochists ;-) I next gave Bovik a similar treatment (again, he was less enthusiastic about it) before moving onto Barsik, the cat, who from petting, I realized had some ferocious dreds to be dealt with. As I brushed him down and felt for the biggest hair balls, I was struck how they didn't move independently from his flesh. Pressing a bit harder with my fingertips, I discovered that his body was covered with deep flesh-wounds, which never properly healed, and the fur just grew in on the scar tissue. Before you lambast the owners for animal negligence and cruelty, there's something else to keep in mind: Barsik is a 10 year-old tomcat who's free to roam wherever he chooses, and consort with, knock up, and fight with whomever he's inclined. Given the circumstances, I'd say it's impressive for a tom to live that long in any condition. The only thing that perturbed me really was the relative indifference people expressed to my "discovery" of the depth and multitude of his scars. Also, I was unsettled imagining poor Barsik wandering home after a fight covered in blood with torn flesh, while nobody even notices him. I understand that people don't generally bring their animals to veterinarians here, but the fact that they never bothered to clean the wounds, and set them as best they can made me uncomfortable. I know I'm just being a squeamish Westerner, and I don't mean to judge locals for their treatment of domestic animals, but I will simply have to reconcile that their cultural of animals in life is just entirely different from my own.
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