I like dogs... from a distance. The greater the distance, the more amicably disposed I am towards them. I have nothing against dogs, man’s best friends and all that, but I wish they’d leave me alone. Just one harrowing, high voltage chase by a mongrel in your childhood is enough to put the fear of the dog in you forever. My wary attitude stems from such an experience during my school days.
The canine in question was an old, weather-beaten and mangy stray; a comatose quadruped that doubled as a dog. Hardly anyone deigned to throw a cursory glance at it and it returned the compliment by royally ignoring everybody, preferring instead to sleep away its time in the lane. I regularly took to school. It looked incapable of chasing the fleas and flies that worried it. Was the poor harmless thing even breathing, I occasionally wondered, until one day it proved unequivocally that it could not only breathe, but also growl and move – the day when, without any warning, it came to pulsating life with a sniff, a snarl and a spring in my direction.
Yet who would have thought the dog to have had so much energy in it? One minute it was dead to the world, the next it seemed to have only murder in its head. Believe me, I had done nothing to provoke it – hadn’t prodded it or yelled in its ear or stepped on its tail; I wish I had. The lane which had steps at regular intervals instantaneously became a level race track as my feet flew over it stopping only when a quick glance over my shoulder showed that the quirky creature had resumed its old familiar torpid position. But if it was clever, I was cleverer; I changed my route.
Since then I have been very circumspect in my dealings with dogs. But they keep popping up everywhere and I have to find ways and means of dodging them. Not easy at all. I’ve noticed their owners are baffled that the whole world doesn’t love their dogs with a fervour equalling theirs. Try telling a dog lover when you visit her house you have mild cynophobia, which, by the way, means fear of dogs, and chances are she will look blank. She has never heard the word; the very idea that anyone could be afraid of dogs is alien to her. If you’re lucky, she might look alarmed and reply, ‘Sign of what? An infectious disease? Oh no, my precious poppet could catch it. Let me take him to another room.’ Ah, but this is only wishful thinking.
What actually happens is that before even a bleat escapes my lips, the dog gambols towards me. But the owner only gazes indulgently at the canine apple of her eye and says, haha, he won’t do anything. ‘Not to you, but certainly to me,’ I think, as, my heart banging against my teeth, I leap for cover and try to hide behind whoever is near me. Yes, for the dog lover, the dog greeting me with a bark loud enough to rip my head off, jumping on me and doing a war dance around me, sniffing suspiciously about my feet before licking them and baring its fangs ferociously as a preliminary to sinking them into some part of me is nothing.
‘He’s just being playful,’ she says, enjoying the fun. Or, ‘see, he really likes you, that’s why he’s circling you. He doesn’t do this to everybody.’ So I have been singled out for the honour of suffering a silent heart attack. If I finally whisper in desperation that it be tied up, she reacts as if I had inflicted the third degree on it. And gets offended that I referred to the dog as ‘it’ instead of ‘he’.
A brisk evening walk is made brisker by the stray dogs that litter the pavements. I feel like an undercover agent as I dodge, duck, swerve, jump, cross and re-cross the road to avoid stepping on them or their poo. The only time I ever got the better of them was when I once found I was playing Pied Piper to an assorted group. I quickly realised it wasn’t me but the meat cutlets in my carry bag they were after. I furtively made a ball of the paper covering and flinging it at them, dashed into my house. Every dog does not always have its, sorry, his/her day.
(khyrubutter@yahoo.com)
A fortnightly column by the city-based writer, academician and author of the Butterfingers series
