Downward dog

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I’ve been hanging out with… let’s call him ‘downward dog’ (or DD for the purposes of this post, mostly because he does a most enviable downward dog in the mornings) for a week now, and boy has he taught me a great deal. I’ll start with the cool parts, though to be honest, it’s all cool He parts crowds. When I go out with him, all kinds of people change their routes, quickly crossing over to the other side of the road, or choosing not to leave their cars/perches just yet. I guess that’s how all those dog-walkers in Jozi feel when I spot them from afar and change my walking route. He is precious! and has totally sold me on getting a miniature dog. Eventually. Just need to put a few things in place, see about my schedule and about not living alone, then I can provide a good enough life for one. ‘Cause he is not without demands. He requires a minimum of 2 walks a day. One in the AM, preferably before high noon, and one in the PM, once the streets have emptied of people and cars. A couple of nights I’ve come home late. The first time was at midnight, and as I opened the front door I could feel his weight against the door, and hear his scratching and whining. When I got in, he hustled me like a nonsense! I sprinted to the bathroom, did my business, then sprinted to get his leash so he could get his did. The helper can be heard calling “DD! DD! Malandro!” He hides away when he hears her tone, ’cause he knows he did something really malandr-inous and doesn’t want to cross her path just then. 

He is uber-attentive. Soon as you wear street shoes and he hears the chink of chaves, he starts chasing his tail, thinking you’ll take him out. When he sees your hand reach to get his leash from its perch, he literally starts climbing walls, is how excited he is. It takes some doing to attach the leash to the collar and open the door. When I leave it so late (midnight), he practically flies down the stairs, dragging me in his wake. A couple of times I’ve almost lost my step… that’s what I get for partying too long and leaving him home alone beyond the time he’s accustomed to. Once outside, on flat ground, he picks the direction he wants to go in, then proceeds to sniff at the trunk or roots of the myriad trees present, pissing where he thinks it necessary to leave his scent. He is truly something to watch. Oh, the rules are that you stay outside for as long as it takes him to do number 2. And it’s a science, from a seven-day observation period, I’ve narrowed the average down to 10 minutes of walking and pissing/marking the street before he takes a dump. After that, more pissing/marking, until you the human decide it’s time to get back indoors. And the whole time I’m thinking, “dude! (a) just how much piss do you have in that bladder, and (b) you should go to the Kegel Olympics for being able to exercise that much start, stop control!”

We get into some adventures though. He is a total mchokozi. He knows there are big dogs three gates away, so he walks over there, sniffs at the space underneath the gate, then proceeds to piss on the pillar holding one of the gate hinges. You should see how crazy that drives the dogs behind the gate. Ok, so we’re both wachokozi ‘cause after I observed that the first night, I deliberately take him that way, just to see if we can provoke the ‘prisoners’. Lord help us the day the gatekeeper decides to open it as we’re indulging in our shenanigans.

DD is a most awesome ice-breaker and a great help in assessing someone’s character. I walk him in a different direction ‘cause I want to go by a kiosk and get some stuff. I speak my getting-better-by-the-day-but-still-woefully-inadequate Portuguese to the kiosk owner, and the result is so! not what I desired. The owner says to me that my Portuguese is bad, and that the undesirable result is what I’d asked for in Portuguese. Yeah, right! Anywho, having recently ‘Africakanized’ (this meaning, stopped having a fit about everything that’s not working, and choosing to use the situation – whatever it is – to my advantage), I accept his BS, and we end up having a really great conversation, courtesy of DD. He sees me holding the leash tight (DD likes to lure me into thinking he’s a mild dog, then, when he’s certain I’m not holding the leash tightly, he’ll start barking and running towards random people. He pulled that on day one, almost bit a random individual and I was extremely lucky ‘cause I had the leash wound tightly around my hand just then) and asks what kind of dog I’m hanging out with. I honestly don’t remember what breed his owner told me he is. He looks like a maltese puppy, but he’s 10, so he can’t possibly be a maltese dog?? I pull him back towards the curb so the kiosk owner sees him.

Kiosk owner decides to work on his English with me, and tells me of how he loves dogs, has 6 german shepherds, one doberman. He wants a rottweiler. I ask him if he knows how potentially dangerous that dog is, and a conversation ensues about the merits and demerits of certain breeds. He knows the rottie’s a good indoor family guard dog and he likes its weight, all that muscle and huskiness. I tell him I’ll see what I can do once I’m back in SA. The conversation then turns to how he thinks german shepherds aren’t very good guard dogs, and how the one doberman mauled one german shepherd to death. He says he got home one night after closing the kiosk, to find a mauled dog. Had thieves invaded his compound? Nope. It turned out it was the doberman that done it. He says he was very, very saddened by the loss of the german shepherd, though he’s quick to add that he didn’t cry ‘cause it was a dog, but that it did touch his heart. Did he put the doberman to sleep (in case he’d acquired a taste for german shepherd jugulars)? And I relate this urban legend from my home town, about a family man who had a doberman guarding the house. According to the legend, dobermans are very jealous dogs, they don’t like to see you, their owner, giving someone else quality time. His mom came to visit and he (naturally) spent a great deal of time with her. One sunday morning the family went off to church, leaving the mother in the hao ‘cause she wasn’t too well. She decided to go out into the garden to get some sun… and the rest is legend. They came home to an awfully nauseating sight and tragedy, courtesy of the jealous doberman. So, did kiosk owner put the doberman to sleep? No he did not.

That’s one interesting thing about Maputo. Everyone is warm and eazee, you can feel that ‘hakuna matata’ vibe, BUT, people have dogs, and all kinds of security contraptions in their homes and compounds. Clearly, there’s a need for the kind of security exercised, but the level and characteristic of crime in this city are not immediately evident. I’m still trying to figure them out. One thing I’ll say though, is there is nothing more beautiful than anonymity. Blending in with everyone else, not standing out (when you make sure to shut your mouth). Reason #304847 why I love being an African in Africa (Afrikanization notwithstanding).

Re: the character assessment, I’ve always thought dogs are a good tool to figure out if a person, of the opposite sex, that you might could be interested in in that way, shared some of your world outlook. DD quickly helps me determine that a very sweet guy, love interest (LI), I met a couple of days ago is not going to be easy to get along with at a fundamental level. Granted he’s extremely sweet, but when you’re this long in the tooth (did I just say that of myself? I meant it at an experiential level ), you’ve seen ‘em all. What gives him away is that as soon as I exit the apartment with an excited-to-be-out DD, he immediately raises his leg as if to kick DD. We go downstairs together. I figure I’ll let it ride this first time, afterall, maybe he felt threatened and inclined to defend himself. DD isn’t paying him any mind anyway. We get downstairs and chat as DD is busy leaving his mark on a nearby tree trunk. I ask him if he’s scared of DD, ‘cause a more harmless dog would be hard to find.

There’s a Portuguese saying, o cao que ladra nao morde, a barking dog does not bite/his bark’s worse than his bite… though I’ll bet there’s a whole lot of folk willing to attest to the contrary! LI’s response, lifting his leg in a kicking motion to indicate that he has his leg to keep away DD’s bite, leaves me cold. And no, lest you think one easily dismisses someone based on one ‘small’ thing. What usually happens is that the person has already either offended you or raised your hackles through a series of very small, negligible matters. DD is the last straw in this load of raised hackles, and I smile politely, but acknowledge that LI is a non-starter.