Nathalia Caballero, 37 years old, has a deep love for animals. She has four dogs: Yorkies Sweet and Gabbana; Scarlett, a Pomeranian; and Crixus, a Great Dane who came into his life two years ago as emotional support to help him cope with grief. He accepted that the father of his children took Sergio, the eldest, 13 years old, to Mexico to celebrate his birthday, not that he took him to the United States. Since then, he has not returned. A few months later, in August 2023, Nathalia and her two other children, Valeria and Ricardo, moved to a residential complex in the town of San Cristóbal, in the southeast of Bogotá. That’s where another nightmare began. His neighbors and the administrator of the complex rejected Crixus because of its size. It is 90 centimeters tall and weighs 90 kilograms. “They called me every week to complain about the smells, the footprints, because I took him out without a muzzle. According to them, Crixus He was responsible for all the damage to the building,” says Nathalia. To check if her dogs generated a bad smell, she requested a visit from the Bogotá Health Secretariat, which denied the bad odors. “What happens is that they hate you because of her dog,” Nathalia says an official told her. Nathalia bought an odor purifier, socks for her dog, leggings for her; She even took it out less than before. But the criticism never stopped. She felt harassed and, after five months, she moved out.
Nathalia’s story is one more of a new reality that is increasingly present. A survey published in March 2024 by Cifras y Conceptos, in collaboration with the Universidad de los Andes and the Humboldt Institute, reveals that if in 2011 38% of Colombian households had pets, by 2018 the figure was already at 50% and in 2024 it is 57%. Furthermore, 40% of them claim to have experienced some type of conflict in their residential environment due to having animals. That is, one in five households says they have suffered coexistence problems due to their pets.
A matter of intolerance
Coexistence between humans is a challenge and, with pets involved, it can become even more challenging. Dog barking, cat meowing, unpicked excrement, footprints in common areas and the omission of muzzles for dogs of breeds considered potentially dangerous are some of the main inconveniences faced by pet owners. “They harassed us so much that the truth was already unlivable. I couldn’t take it anymore. The little dog even started to get stressed because I wasn’t taking him out as much anymore. He licked his paws a lot and pulled out his hair. If taking him out to the green areas involved the trauma of putting socks on him, it was already very difficult,” says Nathalia Caballero, the owner of Crixus. “I’m traumatized, now I’m reduced to living in a super small place where I know no one is going to bother me,” she says.
Oscar Jiménez Mantha, deputy director of wildlife care at the District Institute for Animal Protection and Welfare of Bogotá, points out that coexistence problems related to pets are, in reality, “situations of intolerance.” “They are living beings,” highlights Jiménez, citing a ruling from the Constitutional Court that highlights that one cannot go against the essence of dogs, the pet preferred by Colombians: according to the study led by Cifras y Conceptos, the 71% of pet owners have a dog, 51% have a cat, 4% have other animals such as rabbits, turtles and mice, and 2% have fish. “It is the nature of dogs to bark, and it is not reasonable to require their owners to prevent it, to be aware of the moment in which they do it or to regulate the intensity of the barking,” the high court stated in ruling T-119. of 1998.
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Jiménez asks pet owners to follow the regular procedure in case they have problems. They should start by presenting the case to the coexistence committee of their building or complex, and only then seek help from the Police. The institution, according to the Cifras y Conceptos survey, dedicated around 550,000 hours in 2023 to mediating conflicts related to dog owners who do not pick up their pets’ waste in the parks or common areas of the complexes.
A latent fear
Armando Velásquez, 55, has lived for 25 years with his wife and two daughters in the Pablo VI residential complex, a traditional middle-class housing area in the Bogota town of Teusaquillo. They have three pets: Tequilaa four-year-old Belgian dog; Bombay, a one-year-old Belgian Groenendael shepherd; and Jager, a three-year-old American bully. Velasquez says that Jager He is very noble and sociable, without aggressiveness problems. “I wear the muzzle, but I don’t have to suppress it because it doesn’t do anything bad, but people think it does. I only put it on him if I see more dogs, because, if I’m not careful, he can attack,” he says, and remembers that some neighbors constantly shout at him through the window, asking him to put the muzzle on them.
The risks are real, and not just from canine attacks. Peaksanother American bully dog whose story he told The viewer On Monday, May 20, he witnessed it. On May 12, Mother’s Day, his owners, María Fernanda Aguilar and Mauricio Torres, took him to the park in the Moralba neighborhood, in the southeast of Bogotá, as was their custom. Another man was there with his dog. Seeing that Peaks He approached Pet, stabbed him in the chest and killed him. She argued that Peaks It looked like a dangerous dog, which should have been tied, with a muzzle. Its owners remember that, although its appearance may cause fear in some, the American bully breed is not classified as potentially dangerous, the legal classification that requires the use of the protection device. They filed a complaint with the Prosecutor’s Office, where they hope to receive justice.
Constant complaints
“A dog bit a guard in the complex,” said an entry in the book of complaints and claims of the Parques de San Cristóbal II residential complex, southeast of Bogotá. “A dog relieves itself, but does not pick them up”, “A dog bit a child from apartment 6-503”, “Two pitbull dogs without muzzles”, “Cats that cause damage and noise when climbing to the roof of the first floor” , others say. Luz López Moreno, a member of the group’s coexistence committee since 2022, explains to this newspaper that that year 15% of the complaints were related to pets and that in 2023 they decreased to 11%, but so far in 2024 they have increased at 23%. She says that, upon noticing the annoyance of many neighbors, they began to monitor the pets with the complex’s cameras and decided to impose fines on owners who do not pick up excrement or avoid the mandatory muzzle. She also points out that another recurring problem is the abandonment of dogs in apartments. “We found two German shepherds alone and barking all day. This makes the other neighbors uncomfortable and we consider it a case of animal abuse,” says López.
Juan Pablo Olmos, animal rights activist and animal rights leader in that lower and lower-middle class town, points out that in these cases it is essential to take measures to avoid coexistence problems. He recommends that owners who must leave their pets alone find a walker, ask their neighbors for help, enroll their pets in dog schools or leave them toys so they can entertain themselves and burn off energy. He also highlights the importance of evaluating whether the pet experiences “emotional attachment,” which requires the intervention of a veterinarian specialized in animal ethology, in charge of studying the animals’ behaviors.
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