My Life With Dogs
Welcome to my random musings about the world, on a weekly-to-occasional basis.
Recently, an old friend back in the US posted something on Facebook about a neighbor’s dog. Apparently it had been barking for half an hour, and she was debating whether to ask the neighbor to do something about it. Last time I checked, that post had 25 comments. They were, without exception, in favor of speaking to the neighbor. Dogs shouldn’t be barking.
I had a flash of memory—I remember that feeling—followed by a moment of total cognitive dissonance. I used to be that person. I am a different person now. Maybe?
I don’t always recognize the parts of me that have changed, but I am extremely, vividly clear about my relationship with dogs. I am terrified of them. Like, phobia-level terrified. I once went through a series of hypnosis sessions, trying to get the fear under control. It helped, for a while, but then it quit working, so I quit riding my bike outside of the city limits. If you knew me back in my former life, back when I was into endurance cycling, you’ll understand when I say that was a serious curtailment.
Fast forward a few years and half a lifetime, and we’re in a pokey little fishing village in Ecuador. There are dogs everywhere. I am still terrified of them; I can only remember one other place we’ve been where the dogs rattled me this much (another pokey little fishing village, in Egypt). It has actually become a real problem: Lee and I have had some . . . let’s say heated discussions on the topic.
These dogs are just part of the scenery. They live here. They probably mostly belong to someone in particular, but you’d be hard pressed to match any given dog to any given house. But when I say they’re everywhere, I mean everywhere. They’re chasing each other up and down dirt roads, lying in doorways, sprawling across the track that passes for sidewalk. They’re barking at motorcycles, barking at pedestrians, barking at me, scaring me half to death. Sometimes I walk out into the middle of the street to avoid the six or eight that are hanging out in front of this house, or the pack of puppies fighting over a piece of rubbish in front of that house.
Occasionally one gets frisky and barrels toward us from an alley, or from behind a house. They bark, or growl, or snarl. I freak completely out, and it takes me half an hour to get my heart rate back down. If I weren’t so phobic, maybe I’d be able to get more out of our time here, notice more, learn more, feel more connected. Instead, I’m mostly just trying to stay one step ahead of complete meltdown. When we leave here, I suspect my strongest memory will be of the dogs, rather than the hummingbirds and the whales and long walks on the beach.
This is the developing world. Barking dogs—while they freak me out—are the least of the problems here. We’re in a large, comfortable Airbnb on top of a hill, but the nearest neighbors are living in shacks made of something that looks disturbingly similar to balsa wood. The wealthier locals have corrugated tin, and some of the really lucky ones have cinderblock. There’s garbage everywhere. The “roads” are not paved, or even graded. The scenic walkway (which Lee keeps jokingly referring to as the Highline—hahaha. So funny.) runs along a garbage-clogged, stagnant, smelly little canal. You either walk through the dog gauntlet, dodging poop every few steps, or take a dusty, bone-shaking ride in a tuktuk.
And the dogs? They bark All. The. Time. I did wake up one night around 3, and realized that for the first time in 3 weeks, I couldn’t hear barking.
I wonder if I’d notice the occasional barking dog, if I went back to my old life. Would I feel compelled to go tell a neighbor to shut their dog up? I’ve done it before. I’d like to think I’ve changed, that I’d be more patient now, that I’d have different priorities. That I’d be more aware of the tumble-down shacks, and the hungry children.
Because, like barking dogs, hungry children and corrugated tin shacks are everywhere. It’s just a matter of what we choose to pay attention to.
Take care,
Lisa
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