Like I said

Like I said, it’s not so much whether if Dante and Shakespeare hated dogs or not but rather the sentiment might be more common than we’d realise. Dogs are frequently included in demonology texts as well as Renaissance/Medieval witchcraft studies if you look hard enough. There’s one book on Hungarian witchcraft and demonology in those days where the Devil often appeared as a dog and witches were accused of being too affectionate with dogs.

That’s a sentiment reflected in one of Cervantes’s work and since lycanthropy too was regarded as a form of witchcraft (turning oneself into a dog and using dogs in witchcraft is still believed by some people in places like Ghana and Cameroon). Since some of the demons in the ‘Hell’ part were dogs and that witches were also thought to turn themselves into wolves, this begs the question over whether if the she-wolf represents something else.

Both dogs and wolves were linked to greed and witchcraft, this increases the possibility of the she-wolf also representing the latter. I suspect that the beliefs in those demonology texts might be earlier given that the printing press came fairly recently in Europe. The same can be said of African churches.

Some excerpts via Google Books

Encyclopedia of witchcraft: the Western tradition – Volume 2 – Page 528

https://books.google.com.ph/books?isbn=1576072436
Richard M. Golden – 2006 – ‎Snippet view – ‎More editions
Regardless of demonology, the region was full of helping spirits that went along with innumerable variants of learning from the Devil, initiation by the Devil, or general contact between witches and devils. … Witches could assume animal forms in all regions: butterflies or birds in Bulgaria, Romania, Serbia, or Macedonia; a goose, dog, or wolf in Bulgaria; cats or dogs in Croatia, Serbia, Hungary, Romania; a wolf, horse, or cockerel in Romania; a turkey or chicken in Romania and Serbia.

Encyclopedia of witchcraft: the Western tradition – Volume 2 – Page 528

https://books.google.com.ph/books?isbn=1576072436
Richard M. Golden – 2006 – ‎Snippet view – ‎More editions
Witches could assume animal forms in all regions: butterflies or birds in Bulgaria, Romania, Serbia, or Macedonia; a goose, dog, or wolf in Bulgaria; cats or dogs in Croatia, Serbia, Hungary, Romania; a wolf, horse, or cockerel in Romania; a turkey or chicken in Romania and Serbia. They could become invisible and fly. In other words, they could behave like spirits, but according to many beliefs, only during night hours, when they could appear as pressing night mora, lid&rc, …

Witchcraft and Demonology in Hungary and Transylvania – Page 74

https://books.google.com.ph/books?isbn=3319547569
Gábor Klaniczay, ‎Éva Pócs – 2017 – ‎Preview – ‎More editions
And to confirm her assertion she referred to the testimony of Mihály Lajos: “I heard the next day from my master that Mrs. János Zuh’s finger was bandaged.”160 Mrs. Zuh’s herdsman also accused her of wanting to poison him with pogácsa (traditional Hungarian pastry), and a lodger also raised accusations claiming that, accompanied by two other persons, after their fight she had wanted to slit his child’s throat. The hajdú gentry testifying in favor of Mrs. Zuh also said that her dog had …
Between the Living and the Dead: A Perspective on Witches and Seers …

https://books.google.com.ph/books?isbn=963911619X
Éva Pócs – 1999 – ‎Preview – ‎More editions
The same can be said about the werewolf data of our witch trials: we can only register traces of a few rather independent werewolf types from these. In Transylvania there was the image of the witch (born with a tail) that attacked humans in the figure of a dog more often than as a wolf, which was the relative of the Romanian werewolf—the priculici—and of a witch with a tail in a wider Eastern European area.” We have also found references to werewolves attacking in the form of dogs …

Here’s thing

Somebody on DeviantART remarked on the differences between pop culture werewolves and folklore werewolves. Based on what I’ve read, actually at some point or another (and even today in other places) both lycanthropy and vampirism/cannibalism/rabies were forms of witchcraft and thus were counted as such.

There’s an essay on Wuli witchcraft, which takes place in Cameroon where the wizard would turn into a dog (a domesticated wolf) and drink its victim’s blood though that’s one of the guises it takes on in addition to a leopard and owl. Among the Baka Pygmies, there’s a folktale where the first wizard was apparently a rabid dog.

That rabid dogs were sometimes thought to be bewitched in both contemporary Cameroon and Early Modern France (its future coloniser). A Ghanaian wizard used his dogs to attack a footballer (I’m not making this up) and there’s also mention of dogs being used in occult practises and rituals in Cameroon.

In fact both wolves and dogs were both guises taken by either sorcerers or demons. So it’s not just cats but also their canine counterparts and according to a few sources, dogs actually outnumbered cats in Scottish and English witchcraft reports. Dogs were also connected to vampirism and probably still is especially when it comes to the aswang, a vampire that turns into such.

Besides I recall somewhere in Armenia where dogs and vampirism/vampires are strongly linked. Then there’s also the belief in the Devil turning into a black dog though it would’ve been stronger before. And the Devil prefigures in ‘black masses’ as a dog with witches turning into the same. Elizabeth Bathory wasn’t just accused of vampirism but also lycanthropy and witchcraft.

So it all goes back to what I’m saying and that cats are far from the only witchcraft animals around.

Stray dogs in Italy

As garnered from pounds and some estimates, they number around 600-800 thousand (or over 800, 000) but could be suspiciously larger not just because of feral dog packs but also because of stray dog-wolf hybrids and owned dogs that do roam around freely especially if they not only guard premises but also hunt at will at certain times. This is often the case in rural areas. This could be true of other places like Austria and Poland.
That isn’t to say that there aren’t that urban stray dogs and from my experience, a good number of those in the Philippines are practically either cheap guard dogs or scavengers and part-time hunters as well as the occasional household dog. It could also happen if the owners were too negligent. Wouldn’t be so surprised if properly reported could skew the numbers even more.
I haven’t been there but I pretty much extrapolated stuff based on what I read and what I experienced, which could be partly incorrect but also pinpoints the problems with defining dog ownership. It’s increasingly associated with owned indoor dogs and even then they can stray if they wanted to.