Street dogs in Moscow

The most famous Muscovite street dog is Laika (Russian: Лайка) who ended up being one of the first animals in space and the first to orbit the Earth.

The issue of Moscow's stray dogs was first mentioned by Russian writers such as journalist Vladimir Gilyarovsky in the late 19th century.

[1] Their sad lot was dramatised by Anton Chekhov in the famous short story Kashtanka, by Mikhail Bulgakov in the novella Heart of a Dog, and by Gavriil Troyepolsky in the novel White Bim Black Ear.

Many, if not most, street dogs share certain physical similarities: medium-sized with thick fur, wedge-shaped heads and almond eyes, with long tails and erect ears.

[3][4][5][6][7] Poyarkov classified their evolving social structures into four groups: The urbanized beggars in particular are unfazed by high levels of activity going on around them,[2] even managing to sleep in the midst of busy areas.

Dogs who locate themselves in high traffic areas realize that, in such places, they often won't need to make any effort to procure food, as pedestrians will simply toss it as they pass by.

The reduced need to compete for food has contributed to stable social behavior, although incidents in which humans were harmed by packs of dogs have been known to occur, particularly in less urban areas.

According to Alexei Vereshchagin, a graduate student of Poyarkov's who has studied them, the dogs generally go out of their way to avoid conflict with humans, and rarely defecate in busy areas or onto pavements.

[1] Theories to explain how they are able to correctly determine their routes include a combination of: Author Eugene Linden, a specialist in the subject of animal intelligence, believes the dogs' behavior exhibits "flexible open-ended reasoning and conscious thought".

[10] In 2007 official statistics suggest that 20,000 attacks took place, of which 8,000 were sufficiently serious to require police or medical intervention[11] and at least one being fatal.