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By Elisabetta Povoledo for The New York Times
POMPEII, Italy — One of Pompeii’s most famous mosaics is of a leashed dog with the warning “cave canem,†or beware of the dog.
That message had become all too appropriate in recent years, as visitors to the city buried by Mount Vesuvius in A.D. 79 could attest. Droopy dogs wandering forlornly along ancient streets were a common sight here. Fights could erupt at a moment’s notice, over females in heat or territory, but mostly over food. There were isolated cases of dogs attacking people. More commonly, people were scared, because the dogs tended to travel in packs, tracking tour groups in the hope of scoring tasty treats.
When the Italian government declared a state of emergency for Pompeii in 2008, Culture Minister Sandro Bondi cited the strays as among the principal problems, along with illegal tour guides, inadequate washroom facilities and general neglect of the site.
But all that began to change last November, when administrators at the ruins introduced a project to promote the adoption of stray dogs from Pompeii.
On its Web site, the project is rendered as (C)Ave Canem. Giacomo Bottinelli, the coordinator of the project, acknowledged that the Latin was not correct. “It should be Ave Canis†— for Hail Dog — “but we didn’t want to get into anything too complicated,†said Mr. Bottinelli, who studied classical philology in college.
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