Crazed Dog Attack

So one of my co-trainees was attacked by her neighbor’s dog during our training in Kanye. She got a nasty bite on the leg but is doing okay by now.  She had been at the neighbor’s house before and even met the dog, but on this particular day, it was with another dog so for some reason decided to attack. That old stupid pack mentality I suppose. Flash forward to my walk home from work Friday.

I am passing by a co-worker’s house. It is a beautiful sunny day, but windy and a bit cold. People are out and about, happy it is Friday afternoon and giving friendly “dumelas” to eachother. I am wearing my down jacket, hat and scarf. Pretty much had been wearing them all day, because our office is so cold (aka, full of windows, cement walls and floors and devoid of heating unless you plug in a space heater, which I don’t have – yet). Anyway, in front of my co-workers house are his three typical Batswanan (hmm, that’s for people - Setswanan?) dogs, literally smiling at me. I have been to the house a couple of times so they know me, and are pretty friendly creatures anyway. So I say, “hi Max” to the adolescent son of the mother dog. He trots over and jumps up on me. No manners. Then mom comes over, along with puppy Mathatha (not his name, but what I will now call him – trouble) and THEY start jumping on me.  Then the two small bischon freeses (or whatever those dirty brown, normally white straggly things are) join in, having easily snuck under the closed gate at the house. And I suddenly have 5 friendly dogs jumping on me. They won’t stop, they are getting me filthy (oh I am SO glad these pants were not freshly washed or I would have been really, really pissed) and I am starting to get a bit concerned that I will never get away from them and that even if I do they will follow me  home.

Then it happens. Mathatha grabs my arm and rips my down jacket in the forearm, making a hole about 1 ½ inches long. He gets another nick in on the other forearm. Or maybe that was his older brother Max. The down starts flying and the lovely moment is over. OVER.  I had been kinda telling them to leave me alone in English the whole time, but now very loud NYAAs starting coming out of my mouth, and the kicking started.  When they figured out I didn’t want to play anymore, they walked away and I stuffed down into my coat and held it in for the rest of the walk. Dumb mutts. Dumb me. Should had just said nyaa and thrown in a few kicks to start with. But that ain’t my way.  And these were friendly dogs.

That night, I cut cute little hearts out of duct tape (well, as best you can make cute little hearts out of duct tape) and placed them lovingly on my jacket. As I did so, I remembered the story my co-worker told me the weekend before of how he awoke in the middle of the night having heard some strange noises. He went outside and saw 4 or 5 guys walking by his house carrying a load of obviously stolen goods from a local grocery; bags and bags of things, mostly food. Well my neighbor and his 5 dogs (did I mention that one of the small dirty brown-white ones has only one eye, so her depth perception must have been zilch) took off running after the guys, dogs barking ferociously, my co-worker yelling and waving a stick or something. The guys saw the dogs and dropped the goods.  By the next morning, the police had figured out who all the culprits were and the dogs and my co-worker had saved the local grocer from a loss of thousands of Pulas.

I also sat down to watch a video called Waltz with Bashir. It was in hebrew, i think, with no subtitles and animated. It started out with a bunch of wild dogs running through the streets of a sitting terrorizing everyone until the stopped outside some guys window and barked up at him.  Nope. Not tonight I am afraid.  Too life like this here animation.

The day after this little mishap, I am walking down the hill and see this scrawny little dog carrying something in its mouth.  As I get closer, it becomes clear that he has the lower leg and hoof (if that’s what it is called) of what appears to be a goat. Well, was a goat. Not sure how the rest of the thing had been divved up, but these dogs are no joke.  I am going over to my co-worker’s later today to loan his wife a book and give her some money for the cat bowl with the  anti-ant moat she bought for me.  I will probably wear my jacket, but forewarned is forearmed. Ehh, I hope.