The next Capsule SF Design fest will be coming up on May 23rd. It takes place on Sunday from 11AM to 6PM at Hayes Valley Park. We at Out With My Dog have been going here for a gazillion years and you can find everything from reclaimed clocks to Sock Dogs!

you can pick it up here.

Wired Magazine picked up a article from the Financial Times which reported that stray dogs in Moscow are becoming more feral and are separating themselves into groups with differing survival strategies. These range from Guard Dogs who are comfortable with people and tend to hang out with security and act as assistants and receive food for work. To Beggars, who are Socialized to people but not personally. Apparently, the beggars are “excellent psychologists. (s/he is a dog who might appear to be) dozing as throngs of people walk past, but who rears his head when an easy target comes into view: “The dog will come to a little old lady, start smiling and wagging his tail, and sure enough, he’ll get food.” These dogs not only smell who is carrying something tasty, but sense who will stop and feed them”. Conversely, Scavengers are socialized to people, but whose social interaction is directed almost exclusively towards other strays as they spend their time scavenging for food in garbage. Lastly, Wild Dogs are illustrated as an unsocialized group of wild, nocturnal hunters.

The most interesting section of the article describes strays who are also knows as Meto Dogs, they are strays who initially learned to ride trams and buses in the 80′s and have now adapted to the subway system. Researchers have put their number at about 500 with a small percentage actually using the metro for transportation.

This happened gradually, first as a way to broaden their territory. Later, it became a way of life. “Why should they go by foot if they can move around by public transport?” he asks.

“They orient themselves in a number of ways,” Neuronov adds. “They figure out where they are by smell, by recognising the name of the station from the recorded announcer’s voice and by time intervals. If, for example, you come every Monday and feed a dog, that dog will know when it’s Monday and the hour to expect you, based on their sense of time intervals from their ­biological clocks.”

The metro dog also has uncannily good instincts about people, happily greeting kindly passers by, but slinking down the furthest escalator to avoid the intolerant older women who oversee the metro’s electronic turnstiles. “Right outside this metro,” says Neuronov, gesturing toward Frunzenskaya station, a short distance from the park where we were speaking, “a black dog sleeps on a mat. He’s called Malish. And this is what I saw one day: a bowl of freshly ground beef set before him, and slowly, and ever so lazily, he scooped it up with his tongue while lying down.”