PETS SAVE POOR LEBANESE FROM POVERTY

Ibrahim al-Dika had raised his Belgian shepherd Lexi since she was a tiny pup, but then Lebanon’s economic crisis made him jobless and he had to sell her to repay a bank loan.

“It got to the point where I was no longer able to feed her, the bank was pressuring me and I hit a wall,” said the 26-year-old, devastated beside her empty kennel outside his Beirut home.

“I didn’t sell a car or a telephone. I sold a soul. I sold a part of me.” Can you afford to keep your pet? Animal activists say this is a dilemma a growing number of Lebanese owners are facing as their purchasing power nosedives.

Tens of thousands of Lebanese have lost their jobs or seen their income reduced to a pittance due to Lebanon’s worst economic crisis in decades.

As many families struggle to stay afloat, activists say increasingly more pet owners are asking for help to feed or rehome their animals, selling them, or in the worst cases abandoning them.

Dika, after losing his father to illness, was laid off last year when his employer, a fashion retailer, closed shop, affecting his ability to support his mother and brother.

He had spent around a year caring for Lexi and training her to sit, heel, give him the paw and play dead. But when the bank started calling, he saw no option other than to sell her.

He drove over a few days later to check in on her and Lexi thought he had come to take her home. “She leapt straight into my car,” he said. “She broke my heart the way she looked at me.”

With more than half of Lebanon’s population now living in poverty, many Lebanese have to depend on nongovernmental organizations to get by — even to feed their pets.

Amal Ramadan, 39, said she used to make donations to animal charity PAW. But these days it is her receiving free bags of food from them for her pit bull and bichon, Nelly and Fluffy.

Her monthly salary working in car rental, once equivalent to $1,000, is now worth just $120 because of the Lebanese currency’s sharp devaluation.

“I don’t have enough income to feed my pets,” said the widowed mother of two, who has taken on extra work to make ends meet. Ramadan said she would rather starve than give up Nelly and Fluffy.