WARNING!!!! This post contains graphic images. Please do not read this post if you love dogs.
Let us never forget that dogs are man's best friend and have been bred to be his companion and helpmeet for just about every occasion. Herding sheep, hunting, sniffing out cancer, sniffing out drugs, companionship, a dog is a man's loyal friend and coworker and he should be treated as such.
Let us also never forget that 300 years ago in 1720 Gaspar de San Augustin noted this peculiar characteristic of Filipinos:
They do not care for any domestic animal—dog, cat, horse, or cow. They only care, and too much so, for the fighting cocks.
http://www.philippinehistory.net/views/1720sanagustin.htm
Filipinos, broadly and generally speaking, do not care about their pet dogs. They allow these animals to roam freely around the neighbourhood or city, feed them unhealthy foods like rice and sardines, and do not give their dogs proper medical care, preventative or otherwise. And to top it all off they allow their dogs to breed uncontrollably which only perpetuates the cycle.
With that in mind I present three dog tales from the Philippines.
The first tale is rather short. It is a puppy's tale after all. While out running down a busy highway one morning I saw a puppy on the other side of the road. All of a sudden he decided to cross over to me and zipped into the road. I jogged over to scoop him up and bring him to safety and placed him at what seemed to be his house. I continued on my way.
I did a u-turn not far ahead and to my surprise I saw the puppy once more on the other side of the road running towards me. I again scooped him up but instead of dropping him off anywhere I decided to take him home. I ran all the way home with a tiny puppy in my arms. It wasn't too far. Maybe 1.5 miles or less.
I did have second thoughts that perhaps I had stolen him, but two things:
1. I don't know where this puppy is from.
2. Whoever owns this puppy is letting him run around on the highway and probably does not care about the dog.
So my conscience is clear. The puppy is safe and healthy now.
The second tale is a bit longer and these pictures are graphic so don't read any further if you are easily disturbed.
At about 1 pm I heard the dogs outside yapping and barking. Like always. It's always the Cujo Chorus trying to lull you into an afternoon nap. But something was off. This barking was shrill and plaintive and overly aggressive. I peeked out the window and saw a few dogs in the bushes so I went to take a look.
Two dogs were savagely attacking a third dog in this area against the wall.
Recently I had seen this dog in the neighbourhood. A new stray from I don't know where. I had seen him in the woods prowling around by himself and sleeping next to a fence. But now here he was being attacked by two dogs and these two dogs had ripped his eyes out. At least I'm certain they did. I do not remember this dog being eyeless when I first saw him. An eyeless dog is an extraordinary sight anyone would remember.
Here are the culprits.
These dogs are always out and about causing a ruckus. Their owners open the gate every morning and allow their dogs to run out and piss and poop everywhere. On this day there was construction work being done on the property so the dogs were moving in and out of the gate freely. Vicious animals. And their owners don't care. Imagine if they had killed or been killed by the dog they were attacking.
We tried to corral the injured dog and coax it out of the cramped area so we could take it home and nurse it back to health. But the dog got away into a thick area of underbrush. We tramped around looking for him but he was too fast. I am surprised I did not get bit by a snake.
I don't know what happened to the dog. Whether he is dead or alive. This was two weeks ago and there has been no horrid rotting stench so I think the dog got away. But to where is a mystery.
WARNING!!! THE NEXT STORY IS VERY GRAPHIC! PROCEED AT YOUR OWN RISK!!
LAST CHANCE!!
It really sets a bad tone for the day when you open the gate to your house and the first sight to greet you is this ghastly image:
The sight of this dead dog and all of his blood spread out on the street was not particularly traumatic for me though I'm sure it was for my dogs whom I was taking out for their morning business. After all this is one of their neighbours too. They have sniffed butts and listened to each other bark all day long. How do dogs process grief? I was not grieved in the slightest. Looking at this dog all I could think was, "I told you so."
How many times I have I told the neighbours to lock up their dogs and not let them run around? Only a year ago another of their dogs was killed in the same manner and place, hit by a truck in front of my house. Sadly it was only a matter of time and even now it is only a matter of time before one of their remaining dogs dies in the same grizzly fashion. How rude and uncaring for these people to endanger their animals and subject myself and the entire neighbourhood to such a horrible display of death.
See the bone in the foreground? I think this dog was out scavenging.
And on the way home: POW!
A few hours later when everyone was beginning to wake up and the sun had risen, the old lady came out and saw the lifeless body of her dead dog. She moved the dog and took a bucket of water and tossed it on the blood. This made a huge mess smearing blood all over the road.
It would have been a lot better had she thrown dirt on the blood and then swept it up. I can't fault her though. She's an old lady who walks all hunched over and has a sunken face and a wrinkly body with probably very little strength to handle a shovel. Apparently the men who live with her were still deep in a drunken slumber. She moved the dog to the curb and waited for them to awake so they could dig a hole to bury the dog.
She loved the dog so much that she repurposed an empty bag of chips as a glove and dragged the dead animal to the curb where it sat for a good four hours. Man's best friend?
Such is the life of a dog in the Philippines.
