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Uncommon Pets: From Around the World

Rare are the people, anywhere in the world, who do not own pets. We may hunt or raise animals for food or labor, but we also need them for love. And you can't get more love sometimes than from a pet. 

For all the reasons we know, dogs and cats have long been the favorite of people everywhere. I love both, but have a sweeter spot for dogs, even though I have a few stories to tell about the dangerous dogs I have faced in my travels.

So I’ll concentrate today on uncommon pets. Farmers' kids sometimes adopt goats or chickens as pets. Like other animals, when young they are more adorable than the most expensive teddy bears. And how many societies can afford or even find teddy bears to buy? Those baby animals may lose their fluffiness as they grow up, but by then they are safe from the butcher's knife.

 

The same happens with the desert nomad kid who adopts a white baby camel or kid as his or her own personal toy and companion. 

Amazon forest Indians, who must hunt for food, have enough respect, and even regret, for the animals they must kill to feed their families, that that they adopt any progeny the dead animals may leave behind. 

Now family pets, those monkeys, sloths, opossums, birds, and others, will be fed and allowed to die of old age.

Pre-Taliban Afghanistan

The following show an Afghanistan that was happier, friendlier, and immensely attractive. To view 28 more photographs of Afghanistan, please go to http://pa.photoshelter.com/c/victorenglebert, click on Galleries, and then on the Afghanistan picture.

Time is flying so fast that I sometimes forget that I was living before the rise of television and computers. A few days ago I came across my nearly forgotten photographs of stone-age people. Stone-aged people in my life time? Just look at the following photographs.

In 1968, having spent four months among the former head-hunting Dyak of Borneo, some of whom still had skulls hanging in their longhouses, I traveled briefly to Irian Jaya, Indonesia'western half of New Guinea, where I watched real men sharpening and using stone axes.

But then, on Indonesia's more than 17,000 islands, over 900 of which are inhabited, and of which I visited eight over a period of seven months, you can experience the most amazing variety of civilizations, races, cultures, and religions there may be anywhere else over a similar area.

Brief sojourn at the stone age

Some of my Dogs, Past and Present

I love dogs and have owned many. Never less than four while living in Colombia for 23 years because of that country’s insecurity at the time. My dogs have taught me to love and respect all animals, as well as to be awed by their often underestimated intelligence and feelings. I wish I had photographed them all, but I used to be too busy traveling and photographing people. I only started photographing my last three dogs, only one of which, a pit-bull, is still alive.

I wasn’t happy when one of my sons adopted it and, no longer allowed to keep it in a new apartment, he asked me to adopt it myself now. I had heard too many bad things about those dogs. But dogs are like kids. They behave according to their education and amount of love they get. Tango, my pit-bull, is the most loving, intelligent, comical, warm-hearted dog that I ever owned. He warms my heart and makes me laugh all day.

I’m posting a few of the three dogs’ pictures hereafter. To see them, please click on the previous post. To see more, please click on http://pa.photoshelter.com/c/victorenglebert, then on Galleries, and then on the dog photo.

Some of my Dogs, Past and Present