Charlie was kept in a cage for most of his short life; he was suffering from dehydration and a severe lung infection when he was handed to an animal rescue group in Dubai. Charlie is a two-year-old Yorkshire terrier – a breed that sells for up to 10,000 Arab Emirates Dirham (£2,130) in local pet shops. He was surrendered by his owners’ domestic worker after they left the United Arab Emirates, and has since been adopted. Charlie was lucky – hundreds of dogs are abandoned when their owners leave the country.

Some of these dogs will end up a world away from Dubai’s pristine gated communities. Less than an hour’s drive from the city, in the nearby emirate of Umm Al Quwain, is the Stray Dogs Centre. Deep in the desert otherwise inhabited only by camels, this rudimentary shelter is at maximum capacity; 123 dogs scrabble against their cages, desperate for a human touch – the barking is deafening.

I believe a lot of people just think, ‘I’m going to be in Dubai for three years so let’s get a dog for three years’ Fiona Myers-Watson

Fiona Myers-Watson, a volunteer at the shelter, estimates that at least a quarter of these dogs are abandoned pets rather than born strays. The shelter has already received several messages in recent weeks from expats who’ll be leaving their dogs behind in the summer. Last year, volunteers rescued a dog left in an empty villa. “This was in Jumeirah Islands, where rents start at around AED 250,000 a year,” she says, “so we’re not talking about people with no money.”

The problem, as she sees it, is inextricably linked to Dubai’s unique blend of transience and consumerism. “I believe a lot of people just think, ‘I’m going to be in Dubai for three years so let’s get a dog for three years’,” she says. “You see people coming here and buying into the lifestyle – you get a nice villa that you’d never be able to afford at home, get a Porsche on credit because the bank will easily give you a loan, spend AED 600 on brunch every Friday, and get a cute little dog to go with it all.”

The number of abandoned dogs rises in the summer as expats decide to relocate. Photograph: Hannah Bass

As summer approaches, Dubai’s animal shelters are bracing for the seasonal surge in dumped pets. “Summer is our worst period because there’s a mass exodus of expats,” says Alister Milne, manager of K9 Friends, the UAE’s longest-established dog shelter. He says that the rate of abandoned dogs doubles or even triples most summers as families take advantage of the long school holidays to relocate or return to their home countries.

The rate of abandonment increases further when there’s economic uncertainty; the 2009 crash saw huge numbers of dogs being left behind as owners fled the country, in many cases chased by bad debts. “You can tell how the market is doing based on how many dogs we’re taking on and how many we’re managing to re-home,” Milne says. But the problem isn’t confined to periods of crisis; just last week, K9 Friends had a report of a dog left without food or water in a recently vacated villa.

Mahin Bahrami, founder of the Middle East Animal Foundation, which coordinates rescue and advocacy efforts for both domestic and wild animals across the UAE, estimates that at least 40% of Dubai’s dumped dogs, cats and small pets are the result of owners leaving the country. She recently tracked down two abandoned cats to an owner who had moved back home to Lebanon. “The expats here often don’t think or plan ahead,” she says. “It’s just about what they want right now: ‘I want a cat right now, and then we’ll see’.” She describes the attitude as “khalli walli”, a dismissive Gulf Arabic expression that loosely equates to “who cares?”.

Stray dogs at the animal centre in Umm Al Quwain, Dubai. Photograph: Hannah Bass

This attitude extends to exotic pets. Bahrami’s foundation works with Ras Al Khaimah Wildlife Park, a sanctuary for wild animals that were once kept as pets. Bahrami has dealt with lions, tigers, cheetahs, and even crocodiles, despite a law passed this year making ownership of such animals illegal. “You would be amazed what you can find even in the apartments in the Marina – that place is a jungle,” she says. “They’ll buy a little lion club and get rid of it when it gets big. And then they’ll go get another baby.”



You can tell how the market is doing based on how many dogs we’re taking on Alister Milne

While exotic animals are usually surrendered to welfare organisations when their owners struggle to cope, unwanted domestic animals such as cats, dogs, rabbits and birds are often left to fend for themselves. They are locked in empty houses, dumped on the street, or driven out into the desert. Myers-Watson recalls an expat threatening to have his dog euthanised if the Stray Dogs Centre couldn’t take it before he left the country.

The Dubai government has taken steps to encourage expats to relocate their pets when they move on. It has effectively eradicated rabies, so pets can be exported to most countries, including the UK, without a lengthy quarantine. Cats and dogs are required to be registered and linked to the owner’s ID, and abandonment is illegal.

The Middle East Animal Foundation wants the authorities to take this one step further and flag pet ownership when a resident’s work visa is cancelled, so the owner would have to account for the pet before leaving the country. “It will create more work at the border but we hope that it will at least make people think more seriously when they adopt or buy a pet,” says Bahrami. “We also want to encourage more people to adopt rather than buy because it changes the mentality and elevates the status of animals.”

Animals are abused all over the world, but the scale and cause of abandonment in Dubai seems to reveal something about the mentality of a sizeable minority of expats. Yasser Elsheshtawy, an urbanism expert and associate professor of architecture at United Arab Emirates University in Al Ain, believes a feeling of impermanence is built into the city by design. “Overall, the sense is that the city, even down to the urban environment, is conceived as a transient place,” he says.

“The newer neighbourhoods are very pleasant and luxurious but you feel that you could be anywhere in the world. There is a sense of anonymity, of placelessness, and personalisation is discouraged. If you feel that you don’t really belong to the place, then it’s much easier to leave when the time comes.



“Possibly this is even done on purpose, to make sure that people always feel that they are here on a temporary basis,” he adds. “It’s a sanitised version of urbanity that is aimed at avoiding conflict, a kind of contract established between the state and expatriates: the state will take care of them, in terms of services and economic opportunities, but in return there is no meaningful and certainly no critical participation.”

As he prepares to face the summer influx, Milne from K9 Friends encourages expats to think carefully about what they’ll do with their pets, even in the worst-case scenario of redundancy and debt. “People need to have a plan, and they also need to have a backup plan for if something goes wrong,” he says. “The thing is, almost everyone here will leave the country at some point. It’s not a ‘what if’ – it’s a ‘when’.”

Follow Guardian Cities on Twitter and Facebook to join the discussion, and explore our archive here