In six months here, I recall seeing two dogs.

Two.

(Aside from maybe a half-dozen dogs I saw during a couple of visits to the boardwalk, which isn’t “real” Abu Dhabi. Being walked by their owners. All of whom were Westerners. Those don’t really count.)

The two dogs I saw in regular-folks neighborhoods:

–A white dog, perhaps a stray, outside the Sri Lanka embassy. I doubt the dog had anything to do with Sri Lanka; it was just moseying around loose and kids were following it, but warily, it seemed. It was a medium-size dog of indistinguishable breed.

–A slender, Shepherd-looking dog. Brown. Also loose. But at night. About a half-block from the Teeny Apartment. It didn’t look domesticated, particularly. I could see people, including adult males, moving away from it. I just kept walking. It followed me for a while; did it sense a potentially sympathetic creature? I considered turning around and seeing if it would respond to a pat on the head or something. But then the pooch got distracted and wandered away.

Those are my two dogs.

Anyway, no. Abu Dhabi is not a dog city. The UAE is not a dog country. Islam is not a dog religion.

I make no claim to being any sort of expert on Islam and dogs. I am concerned that I may misrepresent general beliefs.

But I believe we can make some generalizations that apply to most Muslims in regards to dogs. Some of this is religion-based. Some may be more culture-based.

–Dogs are considered unclean. Haram, is the word. If licked by a dog, a person needs to wash himself. If your clothes are licked by a dog … same thing. Gotta wash. If a dog eats off a human’s plate, the plate must be washed seven times before a human can use it again.

–Dogs are not to be kept in the house. It seems to be commonly accepted that an angel will not enter a house if a dog is in it.

–Dogs are not meant to be kept as pets. They may be kept for purposes of guarding a house or hunting. That’s fine. But not as pets.

Cats, however … no problem. Inside or out.

From the reading I have done, it also is clear that dogs are not to be mistreated. Pretty much expressly prohibited, actually.

You just don’t want them around. At all.

I have been around a dog most of my life. Sometimes more than one. As a kid, we had the little mutt Sandy. As a teen, we had the beagle “Schoen.” We had a mutt named Basil in Highland (I found him on the street outside the house), a shih-tzu named Scarlett and two mixed-breeds named Kaiser and Katja.

So, yes, I’m a dog guy. Not to the nth degree, but I am predisposed to like dogs. I like their devotion. I like that a dog will die defending its master. I like to analyze their behavior and try to figure out how they think. I love their pleasure in small things — a biscuit; a child coming home; just hanging around with people.

So, yes, it makes for an interesting absence of “man’s best friend.” In a way, I feel a bit sorry that in Abu Dhabi, anyway, people seem to have divorced themselves from the possibility of having a trusty pooch greet them when they get home.

On the other hand … I have never, ever heard a dog barking, in this town. I haven’t heard of anyone being bitten by a dog. And I have not seen any waste on sidewalks. None. So there is that, too,  for you non-dog lovers.

They just don’t exist here. Not really.

And if any of you readers know differently please don’t hesitate to set me straight.