Owning a dog in Islamic Iran

The threat of dogs being taken away by the police is one that their owners are constantly aware of

Shahrzadnews:A policeman stops a middle-aged woman driving along a Tehran motorway. She is not speeding however, indeed he is not interested in her driving. The problem is that there is a 10-month-old puppy in the car. The woman is told to report to a special centre in the capital and hand over her dog. She will never see it again.

Dogs are as much a part of present-day Tehran as they ever were. The difficulty of housing them in small apartments, the heavy expense of grooming and visits to the vet, even the religious decrees of ayatollahs who regard dogs as unclean – none of these have stopped people keeping them as pets. Iran’s religious leaders has sanctioned guard dogs, and pet dogs may be kept at home. However they may not be let outside, and it would seem that the recent clampdown has a religious justification.

Every evening at sunset, dogs gather in parks throughout Tehran. For their owners, the ritual is a way of making new friends. Owners even refer to each other by their dogs’ names; Alireza for example is better known as Mickey. Though most parks display large signs prohibiting animals, these are widely disregarded. However the threat of their pets being taken away by the police is one that dog-owners are constantly aware of.

Centres for breeding and training dogs have sprung up in most of Iran’s major cities. Breeds range from fancy lapdogs to working animals used by firemen and the police. Though officially no such business is allowed to operate, dogs at such centres change hands for anything between a hundred and a thousand euros. Rescue- and sniffer-dogs fetch even more.

Vet Nasrin Kermani says more and more people have pet dogs, keeping her and her colleagues very busy. “As a consequence I would hope that the authorities would take animal rights more seriously,” she says.

Meanwhile dogs may not go out on the streets. Iran’s cities are still no-go areas for man’s best friend.