Sausage, the riot dog of Greece
A dog at the heart of the action in Greece.
Meet Sausage, the riot dog, a resident of central Athens, who doesn't mind if you show up for a day of mayhem as long as he can join in.
Whenever there's a demonstration, Sausage is there, always taking the side of the protesters and lending a sense of comic relief to the occasionally violent proceedings.
He's become a local celebrity.
Stray dogs in Athens don't look like stray dogs in other big cities. Many, Sausage included, wear collars and tags.
Instead of rounding them up and destroying them, authorities in Athens pay to feed more than 2,000 of them. They are neutered, given vaccines, identified with microchips and released back onto the street, wearing a tag with a phone number to call if they are in -- or causing -- trouble.
For a time there was talk that the financial crisis -- would force the city to halt the stray dog program. It was indeed interrupted but has resumed with officials now calling Sausage a "symbol of freedom."
Deborah Lutterbeck, Reuters.
Meet Sausage, the riot dog, a resident of central Athens, who doesn't mind if you show up for a day of mayhem as long as he can join in.
Whenever there's a demonstration, Sausage is there, always taking the side of the protesters and lending a sense of comic relief to the occasionally violent proceedings.
He's become a local celebrity.
Stray dogs in Athens don't look like stray dogs in other big cities. Many, Sausage included, wear collars and tags.
Instead of rounding them up and destroying them, authorities in Athens pay to feed more than 2,000 of them. They are neutered, given vaccines, identified with microchips and released back onto the street, wearing a tag with a phone number to call if they are in -- or causing -- trouble.
For a time there was talk that the financial crisis -- would force the city to halt the stray dog program. It was indeed interrupted but has resumed with officials now calling Sausage a "symbol of freedom."
Deborah Lutterbeck, Reuters.