It's a Dog-Eat-Dog World Out There, Man

Every day, when I walk into my family compound, tired from a day at work and covered up to my ankles in red dust, I find myself facing another obstacle: dogs. My landlord owns three, and it actually is pretty precious – a papa, a mama, and a baby dog. Well, the papa dog has a head the size of a basketball and is at least five feet tall when he stands on his hind legs. The mama is skinny and black, and is so terrified of people while being overwhelmingly excited that she does this squirmy, jumpy, back-and-forth dance until you pet her and calm her down. The baby dog is a perfect mixture of the two, with a slimy pink tongue that refuses to stay in her mouth. Their names, respectively, are Coconut, Blackie, and Cuddles. And when I walk in the gate, they are all charging full speed ahead, straight at me. Let’s just say that red dust is the least of my laundry woes when I have three sets of muddy paw prints on my beige dress pants.

[On a side note, for those of my friends who grew up with me, I wanted to name our first dog Blackie. Because, well, he was black. It just made sense. No one else in my family would even consider it. Now here I am, justified in my knowledge that Blackie is not as ridiculous a name as I was once forced to believe.]

I remember hearing once (probably from my Dad or Leigh, the two most avid dog-lovers I know) that dogs raised domestically don’t realize that they’re a different species from people. They just assume that they are one of us – just unfortunately lowest on the totem pole, since they only get Purina while we get pasta. That idea always made me smile. Supporting this theory was the reaction of our first dog, Spider, when we brought home our puppy, Kiwi: Spider was so shocked at this little furry being that he could not close his mouth and stop drooling. There were trails of slobber on the kitchen floor for days. Until we brought another dog to our house, I don’t think Spider realized that he was different from us.

Now this is going to sound like a stretch, but I’m going to say it anyway – I can now totally relate to my dog. I’m living in a country that is not diverse ethnically, so as a Caucasian I stick out everywhere I go, all the time. I might as well be a different species. When I’m at work though, teaching the kids, or going over to a teacher’s house for lunch, or walking to the store to buy electricity, never once do I think, “oh my gosh, I am the only white person for miles and miles.” The color of my skin and the skin of the people around me doesn’t really ever cross my mind. I am Spider, not paying any attention to physical differences, only caring about fitting in and being one of the “pack.” It is not until I go into Gaborone to do my grocery shopping and banking that I realize what a minority I truly am in my village. The country’s capital forces me to face the physical differences between me and my community. If I am Spider, Gaborone is Kiwi (minus the excessive drooling). A very silly analogy, I know, but it struck me as I walked to the store today and I thought it might bring a smile to all my dog-loving friends back at home.
And to be honest, I don’t mind being Spider. He was pretty damn smart.

Blackie, Cuddles, and Coconut, getting into shenanigans on my patio.

 
This is for you Dad -
 
“It’s not the size of the dog in the fight; it’s the size of the fight in the dog.” -Mark Twain