Wednesday, January 17, 2007

A dog story

I enjoy my morning or afternoon walks in Sevika’s parents neighbourhood. It’s a nice round with lovely elevated sea views where you can spot breaching whales or dolphins occasionally, the hazy horizon, and the exotic trees overhanging the road.

Only the dogs are a big pest! SA dogs are not like Norwegian dogs. They are there to keep burglars out… or at least to make them less interested, but in for a kill any time it seems. The threatening big ones, and the insanely loud and aggressive little ones.

For the most part they are behind fences and gates so that you can ignore, even though the barking follow you all the way. The little ones though, seem to get out on the road whenever they sniff a suitable victim like me. Throughout the rout I meet the same agitated little bastards, barking and snapping at me. The whole of Westbrook seem to agree that these guys do their job well.

Still trying to ignore the little devils I brought my Ipod to leave out the barking from my head one day. Then I felt the sharp teeth scratching my ankle, and the wet saliva from the same bloody notorious dog that I had tried to avoid so many times. Scared and furious I got away, but for days I was having.... not quite nightmares, rather intense and amazingly creative daydreams about what I could do to that dog if I could only be so lucky as to meet it again.

So, armed with a chunk of wood and denying to take a defeat, I was eager for another encounter. And the dog god blessed me once again, and I chased it around with kicks and long swings with the wood, but only to give it a good scare and for me to regain some respect, haha.

Now, the next day when I was out driving I told my wife and daughter about the dog and my vivid imagination of that dog’s brutal destiny. As we drove past so I could show them, the dog was there once again! Without thinking I wound down the window and barked aggressively at the dog. The dog now utterly confused and bewildered about my behaviour. My family both in shock and crying with laughter. I was a bit sore because I was the centre of this big joke, but that dog is shit scared every time I come with my cane, and the word seem to carry around the route also, or so it sounds. So first round to me!!