Soi dogs of Pan Buri

I recently travelled to Pran Buri beach - around 250km south of Bangkok and 20km from the popular holiday resort of Hau Hin. My primary objective was to take some photos of the colourful local fishing boats which launch from the beaches each evening to catch squid. The beach front road stretches 6km from the Pran Buri river estuary down the coast to another small river estuary, the sandy beach being broken only by one large limestone karst jutting a 100 metres or so into the sea, at the base of which is Wat Summanawat, a Thai Buddhist temple. A number of hotels and small restaurants are dotted along the beachside road, the sparse ribbon of development backing on to fields and scrub land. 

Stray dogs are endemic to Thailand (the last official figure I could find was for a number of around 750,000 strays in 2016) - at least one or two seemingly occupying every small street, or soi in Thai. But I was astounded by the numbers that lived and roamed up and down the seafront in Pran Buri. The strays also mixed with locally owned dogs - many homes had at least one dog and as there are few fences between the houses the dogs were left to roam the streets with the strays. 

As there were so many I thought it would be an interesting project to try and capture a few of their portraits and also get some group shots.....so as I visit the beaches regularly throughout the year, this has become an ongoing project. 

Below are a few of the shots taken so far. I'm particularly pleased with the photo of the two puppies on the beach in front of the rusting buoy, especially as I was being growled at the time by a particularly aggressive large black dog - presumably dad. So I took a couple of quick shots and moved swiftly on. 

I tried to gage each photographic situation and not approached the dogs if they were being raucous and it felt like there was a greater chance of being bitten  - most have been friendly but rabies in Thailand is quite common and becoming more of a problem, so a cautious approach is required and a rabies vaccination advisable.

Gear in all cases was a canon 5D lll and canon 24-70 f2.8.