A doggy tale

                        The town of Levanto falls completely silent on Saturdays.  There are no mothers out washing clothes or gossiping on the corners, there are no children kicking soccer balls and screaming in the streets, and all the shops are closed shut. The families have all migrated out with dogs and horses in tow, to the farms.  They’ve packed their rice and potato lunches in Tupperware containers, and carry plastic bottles of chicha, the fermented sugar cane juice, for refreshment. The town becomes ghostly and abandoned, waiting to be brought back to life on Sunday afternoons when the people take the day off from the farms to relax and socialize.

            This Saturday I opted out of a day of collecting potatoes and instead decided to spend the day enjoying the quiet and trying to finish writing my community diagnostic. After an hour of sitting in front of my computer, coaxing it to turn on with little success, I got restless. The sun was out which is enough of a rarity that I couldn’t let it slip by in my room. Gathering up my things I decided to head out on my favorite trail and set up my hammock to read for a while. I put on my local sandals made out of old car tires that bring in many compliments and headed out. Once on the trail I quickly became lost in my thoughts as I jumped from rock to rock in order to avoid the mud. I felt alive and energetic as I half skipped half ran down the path.

            All of the sudden, jolting me from my daydreams of American food, a dog leapt up from a yard I was passing and starts barking. Now I have gained confidence with dogs around here, I can usually shush them away like the locals, but when I looked up and saw this one running toward the yard gate I found myself praying that the gate was locked shut. Much to my horror my prayers went unanswered and the black, medium sized shorthaired dog slipped out from behind the gate barking aggressively. I performed my local shushing noises and waved my hand at the dog, as if to push it away, but to no avail. Suddenly, at a blink of an eye, appeared two more medium-sized dogs, all three advancing on me, growling, bearing their teeth and barking. They forced me back onto the side of the trail up against the blackberry bushes, the bigger one in the middle slightly ahead of the others, its teeth as sharp as nails. At this I turned into a state of panic as my options ran through my head. Tactic number one: shush the dogs away and act like I am about to beat them…not working. Tactic number two: pick up a rock as they taught me in training, and throw it at the dogs…there were no rocks or sticks on the trail. Tactic number three: scream in utter terror and hope that someone hears me. Now I can count the number of times that I’ve truly screamed in a state of panic: once in second grade when my brother jumped out of a corner and thoroughly scared the bajibbers out of me, once when a homeless man in Tanzania exposed himself to me in the street during the middle of the day and the only logical reaction at the time seemed to be to scream and run, and once when I was chasing after a guy that stole my camera in Spain telling him that it was not the ‘right’ thing to do. But here I was out of options of self-defense, so I selected tactic number three, hoping that there might be some straggler still in the house to come out and help me. I looked at the sharp teeth of the dogs and just let the panic run up from within me and transform itself into a shear scream, my body shacking, and pictures of myself lying on the ground and the dog running off with my leg in its mouth flashing through my head.

To my great relief there was a grandma still in the house who came out with a look on her face that seemed to think someone was dying. She waved her hand at the dogs and as fast as they had came they were gone. I mumbled under my breath that I don’t like dogs and then composing myself, looked up at the grandma who seemed to be trying to figure out why she had heard deathly screams. I greeted her politely, told her that dogs scare me, and then awkwardly continued up the path. It took me a while to recover from the incident, I can still see the teeth of the dogs ready to tear me apart, and I can’t figure out how the grandma got them to run away so quickly. The concept of training dogs is such a process in the United States it has created a whole industry around it. Here they stick with the beating technique making dogs flinch anytime you reach a hand out to pet them. They are there to provide protection on the farms and occasionally companionship, but some can seem like wild animals in the woods. I will not let the dogs scare me away from this path as it is my favorite, but I will start carrying a stick or rock for this house!  Turns out a couple of weeks ago I was also attacked by a rooster on this path as I was trying to take its picture…but that’s for another post!