By some estimates, Tangier’s current population of stray dogs approaches
30,000. (For comparison, Moscow’s strays are thought to number about 50,000,
Travel
Solace of the Pack
Peter Fong
M y new friends will meet me at a parking lot two miles from our
rented house. We all like to run before dawn, when Tangier’s seaside
promenade is quiet and the air is cool. When they see me coming, at least
one will immediately bounce across the asphalt in greeting, though it can
sometimes take the rest a few seconds to rouse themselves from their grassy
beds beneath the palm trees.
While the group once boasted seven regulars, we have since dwindled
to a quartet. I’m the tallest of those left by far, the only foreigner, as well
as the slowest and the most intolerant of foul weather. But that’s the voice
in my own head talking — the others have yet to utter a single word of
reproach. Because I’m terrible with names, I refer to them by the numbers
they display: 108, 196, and 1432.
For the past year, this ragtag group has provided a sort of sustenance I
didn’t know I wanted. Since suffering a torn Achilles in 2008, I’d become
a solitary exerciser. With pick-up basketball — my favorite workout for
almost two decades — no longer an option, I turned to running, biking, and
swimming. At varying paces and skill levels. But almost always alone.
Which is why I am especially grateful to 1432 — she’s the one who first
saw some potential in me. Full disclosure: it was her calm, inquiring gaze
that made me stop in my tracks and offer her my hand. She bent her face
downward and inspected my fingertips. I patted her on top of the head. The
next morning, she introduced me to the rest of the gang.
By now you’ve guessed the truth: my friends are real dogs. Not exactly
domesticated but neither truly wild. Feral animals like them represent an
inescapable aspect of urban life in Morocco. There are cats almost every-
where, since many residents set out food and water for them. But the dogs
are less well loved. Rock critic Robert Palmer, writing of the early 1970s,
noted that “Tangier is known for having more, and louder, dogs than any
other city.” His friend Brion Gysin, the painter and poet, claimed to have lis-
tened closely enough to learn their language. He translated one long-distance
conversation as follows: “Everything okay there? Enough food? People
good? . . . Good food here, but people beat us.”
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while Houston’s total is estimated at 1.2 million.) Over my first five years of
residence here, most of the dogs I encountered on my morning run would sim-
ply ignore my presence. But a small percentage would woof at me and a vicious
few sometimes attack, snarling and snapping. In fact, one of my last public acts
before the pandemic struck was a visit to the local branch of the Institut Pasteur
— for the final dose of a three-shot course of rabies vaccine.
But 1432 somehow changed that narrative. She’s middle-aged for a stray,
perhaps three years old, long-legged, with a slim muzzle and sharp eyes. Her
coat is a sleek golden tan, with darker guard hairs. Though frequently buoyant,
her default behavior is wary and watchful.
Compared to her, 196 is cranky and ill-mannered. He carries his tail high,
like a question mark, routinely chases cars and motorbikes, growls at strangers,
and will nip my hand or thigh if he thinks that I’m paying too much attention
to another dog. Before we became acquainted, I would cross the road to avoid
his aggressive barking and uncouth baring of teeth. Although I’ve trained three
Labrador retrievers to sit and stay, I considered 196 beyond reach. And yet he
has already learned that a raised knee means don’t jump and a firm grasp on the
scruff of the neck means don’t bite. On the rare mornings when it’s just the two
of us, he shows a softer side, sometimes rolling on his back so I can scratch his
stomach.
The smallest and apparently oldest of the pack is 108, a plump white dog
with liver-colored spots, like an English pointer gone to seed. She is sweet-
tempered and occasionally melancholy, but on her best days will hustle ahead
of me, leaping back and forth across the concrete drainage canal like a steeple-
chaser.
In addition to their identifying numbers, the dogs’ round yellow eartags
bear the letters SFT, an abbreviation for Le Sanctuaire de la Faune de Tanger.
The founder of this organization—as well as the principal force behind a cam-
paign to neuter and vaccinate the city’s strays—is Salima Kadaoui, a Tangier
native. Forty-something and photogenic, Sally’s professed goal is “for the
humans and animals in Tangier to live in harmony.”
A noble cause certainly. And one that I wholeheartedly support, even on
the mornings when 196 reeks of rotting fish or rancid fat, having slept beneath
a dumpster. On cold, rainy dawns, I have to fight the urge to invite them inside,
where our two adopted cats maintain pride of place.
The dogs do seem to be at least mildly interested in my home life. One or
more of them will sometimes follow me right to our door, then remain there,
as if curious about what I do during the rest of the day. Thus far, however, our
relationship has been based solely on friendship. I greet, pet, run. And that’s
all. I never present them with food, although 1432 once offered me a sniff of a
goat’s horn, freshly severed.
Summer’s Long Run 2021 31
 I know that I look forward to my daily runs
more now than ever. My watch tells me that I move
faster when I’m with the dogs, racing to keep up
with their four-legged dashes. And my heart tells
me that I enjoy close company.

More than once I’ve wondered, Why me? Why now? Could they sense
that I was mourning the death of our most recent Lab, a dog so loyal that we
seldom deployed a leash on our twice-daily walks? Did it have something to
do with coronavirus lockdown, when running briefly became a furtive activity
for people as well as dogs? Or was it a consequence of the months-long inter-
national travel ban, which prevented me from my ordinary seasonal migra-
tions?
Whatever the reason, I know that I look forward to my daily runs more
now than ever. My watch tells me that I move faster when I’m with the dogs,
racing to keep up with their four-legged dashes. And my heart tells me that I
enjoy close company: the click-clack of their claws on pavement, the softer
pad-pad of their paws on grass.
Of the pack members who disappeared as the pandemic wore on, two in
particular are sorely missed: Fluffy and No-Name. Each went missing for a
week last fall, only to reappear with a numbered eartag like the others — Sally
at work. But now they are again absent, this time for more than two months.
And counting. Both were young and playful, with bright eyes and thick,
soft fur. Fluffy looked as if she had a bit of sled dog in her, with a luxurious,
upright tail. No-Name might’ve been 1432’s daughter — similar face and
coat, only shyer, slighter, less confident. Travel around the world with Lance Mason in less than
My hope is that they’ve been taken in by other packs, human or animal. 160 pages. Now available to arm-chair adventurists for $12
Not impossible, of course, but also not probable. They were not really stray (shipped free).
dogs but street dogs. Unrestrained and untended. Of all the pack members, www.pintsizepublications.com
current and former, only I am truly a stray. None of my dog friends actually
wandered away from her proper home or lost himself in transit from one place
to the next. But I have, over and over and over.

Peter W. Fong is the author of the award-winning novel, Principles of

Navigation. In the summer of 2018, he led a first-ever scientific expedition
from the headwaters of Mongolia’s Delgermörön River to Russia’s Lake Baikal.

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