Maggie in Venice

In Venice, dogs lead a life that would be the envy of their peers in other cities: They can wander off-leash without being run over by cars, they have a constant supply of new visitors to sniff, they often wear better clothes than the average tourist does, and if a local dogcatcher were to show up in a calle or campo with a net, he'd probably be sent running by a crowd of angry Venetians.

Here are some photos of a dog's daily life in Venice:

Dogs aren't allowed in supermarkets, but the word "in" seems to be interpreted liberally by Venetian store managers. This dog was waiting for its owner next to the checkout counters in the Billa supermarket on the Zattere. 

In another supermarket--Punto, in the Campo Santa Margherita--we saw a dog tied up at a bottleneck inside the store entrance, where the dog could greet arriving shoppers when he wasn't enjoying the attentions of the security guard. (At the same supermercato, we saw two small dogs run into the store when the electric doors opened. The dogs headed down the store aisles, and nobody looked perturbed.)

In Venice, dogs--like their owners--get to play dress-up at Carnival time. This dog (shown having its bonnet adjusted in the Campo Santa Margherita) was wearing a disguise within a disguise: It was playing the wolf that pretended to be the grandmother in Little Red Riding Hood.

Many Venetian dog owners don't bother with leashes, or with the muzzles that unleashed dogs are supposed to wear in public places. As a result, nearly every walk turns into a meet-and-greet, and the typical campo doubles as a dog park.

Venice may be a tourist mecca and a provincial capital, but in many ways it's a small town where people look after their neighbors--and their neighbor's dogs. The man in the photo is smiling at the camera after rescuing the shop owner's dog, which had bolted from the shop into a sea of tourists during Carnival. (When the man saw the dog running, he seized its coat, lifted it off the ground, and returned the dog to its owner.)