Who let the dogs out?

Bucharest has a problem...and it looks like this.

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Stray dogs. There are over 50,000 of them in Bucharest according to this article, which also explains how there came to be so many in the city. This number is not at all hard to believe as I have come to recognize the stray dogs that live on my street, the ones in the park by my place, the ones by the metro station, and the ones at the park by the school. That's about 12 dogs that I see everyday on my relatively short, above-ground commute. The parliment voted to legalize euthanizing these dogs, which of course doesn't sound great to most of the western world, but if you have to live around all these dogs...you might feel differently. According to the advertisement on the metro, there are at least 30 people treated for dog bites everyday. There is a free rabies clinic in the city that sees plenty of patients. 

Although I have talked to people who were chased or even bitten by stray dogs, I thankfully haven't had any problems with them except for being barked at and sometimes followed around for a bit. However, what bothers me more than knowing that there are so many homeless dogs in Bucharest, is that fact that there might be the same number of homeless people in Bucharest. It's not uncommon at all to see a group of dogs taking a nap in a sunny area of grass, but neither is it uncommon to see homeless people doing the exact same thing. I may not always be comfortable in my apartment here in Romania. I don't have family nearby or even a lot of my things to make this place feel like home, but at least I have heat and a place to live.