A Dog's Tale

Back into full exercise mode I completed eight laps of the taman yesterday afternoon, though not without incident. Said incident revolved around a dog, more accurately a bitch, the one that seems to reside outside the big corner house on the downwards slope of my run, the house with the warning sign about a guard dog. The brown bitch seems to assume the sign refers to her, which is clearly not the case as she wears no collar and roams freely round the estate when the fancy takes her. Back in December she chased Ayiem for a few metres when we were jogging by the house much to his alarm and my amusement.

Now she has obviously graduated to bigger fry, for having ignored me passing by on the first two laps she decided to snap at my heels on Lap 3. I was rather surprised about this as 1) she has never dared do this before, and 2) it required her to cross some ten yards or so to the road parallel to the path that snakes around the taman as I’d previously ran up the slope onto that road, just for the fun of it.

Coming down the road again on Lap 4 I wondered whether she intended to keep this up. She did. And by Lap 5 she was actually trying to hide behind a car parked on the space between the taman path and the parallel road in order to jump out and add the element of surprise to her attempts to intimidate yours truly. By this time I’d had enough. Instead of simply ignoring the pooch, as I ran I took a quick step towards her and growled, quite dramatically, even if I say so myself. I saw uncertainty in her eyes though, to do her justice, she continued to bark manfully or, rather, dogfully. (Bitchfully?)

I spent the first portion of the sixth lap devising a cunning plan. This time on my approach to the mutt I didn’t bother to leap the slope. This meant I was moving right into her territory. She warily tried to face me, but her heart clearly wasn’t in it, and as she seemed to make herself at least attempt a show of aggression I pointed dramatically in her direction. The canine faced with an obvious, and unpredictable, madman dropped her shoulders and shut her mouth.

The question now was whether my triumph could be regarded as complete or whether she would try and save some doggy face on my next circuit. Playing the unpredictability card once more, this time I moved back up to the parallel road. My adversary, clearing assuming it was back to business as usual, resumed the hiding behind the car routine, but this time she emerged somewhat less sure of herself and I let her have it with the dramatic left hand point, looking her squarely in both eyes. Her shoulders dropped once more: there could be only one victor. Me.

The final lap was entirely and rightfully uneventful. Man had asserted his dominion over dog, which had now gone sensibly to sleep outside ‘her’ house.

Oddly enough for some reason, when I told the story to my wife she was not terribly impressed.