The featured image shows a very relaxed, aged, large canine resident of Civita – an attractive, historic, and spectacularly located Calabrian hill town.
Visual evidence – over five enjoyable weeks in southern Italy – suggests that Italian dogs are well-loved by their human “owners”, but that dog owners comprise a smaller percentage of the Italian population than the Australian one.
On Italian streets, however, one’s feet are almost never far from “fresh”, soggy dogshit.
Also over-abundant in Italy: rubbish, in general. Roadsides are typically “lined” with a hell of a lot of litter.
Even in thronged, public urban spaces, bins are often astonishingly-absent/scarce.
In the above respects, Italy in 2023 feels distressingly/amazingly “Third World”.
Italy’s citizens tend to be much more “stylishly”/ more elegantly dressed than is the norm/“Norm” in the land of Oz.
It is, however, inescapably obvious that Italians are much less inclined to bother to clean up after their dogs, and much more inclined to chuck their own rubbish straight out of a vehicle’s window, or to drop it – when standing or walking – whenever/wherever the relevant junk food, bottled/canned drink, or cigarette is “finished”.
(Photo is copyright Doug Spencer, taken in Civita at 1.53 pm on 16 September 2023. This series’ next chapter will give you some idea of just how spectacular are Civita’s surrounds)