I once met a man who befriended me because his dog loved me, she rarely would wag her tail for a stranger, he told me. So we sat down under a shade and discussed more about dogs, which happen to me my favorite pets. I have loved dogs since I was a kid, growing up in Zimbabwe, I first had my own puppy when I was about eight. The day he came home, in a cardboard box with holes on the side so that he would be able to see and breath, I loved him. His coat was black, shiny, typically what I had wanted but he had no white dot on his forehead, which is what I had wanted on my dog, but we soon hit it off. H was shy at first when they let him out of the box, he staggered a little to the side, his legs had gotten a bit stiff from staying in the box then he stuck his nose impudently up in the air and sniffed in my direction and around, everyone else as if to familiarize himself with the surroundings. He then went to a little shrub and lifted one of his hind legs and peed. Everyone burst out laughing and he was perturbed, so he ran a few feet from us and looked back as if inquiring us whether to come back or not, I went over to him and assured him that all was fine, he had just peed on our admiration for him. The following days I was in cloud nine. After school, I would take him for little walks in the fields, sometimes put him among the long grass where he would struggle to come out and sometimes I would run away from him and he would be hot on my heels but he was just a little animal, his speed wasn't that much. I loved it when he would follow me around on a hot day tongue sticking out as he tried to cool himself, tail hanging low and stand under me so that he wasn't in direct sunlight. Sometimes he would bark at a dry tree or chase a bird or try to fight a big black ant. He was hilarious and after he had had his meal, that I prepared with so much care, he would want to be snug, so he would seek me and lie on me. One day he peed on me and I laughed. I loved it when his teeth started to itch and he was biting and gnawing on everything, including my school socks, shoes and toes. He never cared so much, but that was all fun and then, he grew up. I was not allowed to bring him in anymore, he was not allowed whenever the family sat down to eat and he was a dog, so he was treated like one. Not like a person who is treated like a dog, but with dog dignity which in those parts of the world are different from those in America, which brings me to the main issue of the story, of dogs and their names.
In Zimbabwe,. dogs are men's best friends. Men boast about rearing the most healthy pack and about their dogs' loyalty. In the countryside, people can own up to about more than ten dogs. My uncle had twenty on his farm. The highest number I had was five. Most dogs found in the countryside are what they would call in the developed world
'mutts' but they are no mutts at all but just that their breed is not known to the English world. Dogs primarily serve to protect homes in the country. They are reared to be vicious and yet controllable. If the owners are around, they should not misbehave and would not do so except for real hot heads. However, in the night, they are free to attack whosoever trespasses into another man's homestead without prior notice. Before cellphones and emails and all that, a lot of people would write letters announcing their arrivals such that their hosts would be on the lookout for them. Usually when approaching a home one is supposed to call out announcing their advance so that the people there would hold their dogs. Dogs are also used for hunting. The type of dog popular in the countryside is a lean and strong boned and jawed dog that is very agile. The game found in Zimbabwe and hunted by hunting parties that comprise young and old me with spears knobkerries and dogs includes the duiker, hare, impala, eland, antelope, kudu and other small time game. They are used also to fend off animals like baboons that come into the people's fields to steal their maize crop, they come in hoards so if one gets a visitation from them, they would then have to prepare for a year of no produce. Such are the chores of man's best friend in the country. If one goes hunting with a dog, and the dog catches, it is usually rewarded right away, when the people move in for for the kill, usually they do this by cutting the animal's neck and let the blood drip a little bit. There is a certain tribe called
Baremba, who Proffessor Tudor
Parfitt says 52 percent of them carry a Y chromosome known as the Cohen Modal Haplotype (CMH) - unique to ancient priestly Jewish communities. They claim to be of Jewish ancestry and Parfit tracked the missing Ark of the Covenant to their land in Zimbabwe. Tudor Parfitt is a professor of Modern Jewish Studies at the University of London's prestigious School of Oriental and African Studies. Well, this tribe does not eat meat that another person who is not from their tribe cuts, they are a unique people like that.
After the animal is killed, it is disemboweled and the innards fed to the dogs, that is their reward before it is taken home, cut up and the dogs receive more meat after which all belongs to humans, what will be the dogs will be the bones. People name their dogs and names vary according to the person's preferences. Some people name their dogs to make statements to their neighbors so that when they call them and their neighbors happen to be in ear-sight, they hear what their neighbors are complaining about to them indirectly. There are popular English dog names like Spider, Lion, Cheetah, Spanky, Sport, Tiger, Sheba, Bocky etc. When a female adult gets on heat, males in the vicinity go and mate with it and usually the strongest males dominate and have more times with the bitch and the has more pups that have a resemblance to it. Moving on to the Metropolitan areas where the populations are more diversified, there are now more diverse kinds of dogs too. The are Rottweilers, Boerboels, Pugs, Chihuahuas, German Shepherds, Collies, Great Danes, Rhodhesian Ridgeback and a whole lot of them. Many of these are foreign breeds bred in the country over some time they are now used to the clime. Most people use the bigger breed dogs for protection on their properties and the Police use the Rotties and the German Shepherds for sniffing drugs and other duties. The rest of the dogs are fashion dogs.
The man I met whose dog loved me went on to tell me that he rescued the dog from a home and tended her, she is Ukrainian and she is not an Ovcharka, I have forgotten her breed though is is beautiful and very alert. She has managed to score him three dates because the ladies love a pretty dog. To pat someone's dog is common in these parts of the world and it is unheard of in some parts of the world unless if you are the vet or the owner because if you are not, your hand is meat. I am not exaggerating things here but that is the case. Here people, dog owners take an evening walk with their pets on a leash for fresh air, in Zimbabwe, dogs take a walk on their own, either in the yard of a home, because many homes have durawalls around them, or those in the country roam free- range, they do not need that. Dog-owners meet when going hunting and here they meet to discuss their dog's latest developments, allergies, appointments with doctors and the likes. In Zimbabwe, they keep their dogs in the kennels and or outside where they find a space for them to sleep which they rarely do at night but during the day. Whether its raining or not, dogs still belong to the outside and unlike my friend, they do not get one women, they scare one's women away. However, we love dogs and they are our best friends, let this be like this for as long as we live to love life and what it has for us.
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