My Dog is an Alien
By PG Jonker
I think our second hand bull dog is an alien.
Zoë is a bitch. Somehow it feels so uncalled for to refer to her as such. But I mean, she is a female dog, mos.
Zoë likes electrical storms, unlike any other dog I know. She also took a fancy in aeroplanes. Airliners, more in particular. The police chopper that comes around occasionally simply does not do it for her. But man, if BA, SAA, Kulula or OnTime comes flying overhead, she is out in a flash. She zig-zags my erf, whilst barking at the airliners to indicate my erf to be forbinned property for any commercial airliner. She has been very effective with this up to now. Not a single one of those airliners has tried to land there.
Actually I suspect that Zoë is dearly trying to catch one of those airliners. She has not been succesful yet, but just give it time. She is, in the meantime, training herself by chasing the doves away that eat her food. Lately I have noticed that she seems to have given up on the doves. They now go about eating her food at their leisure with Zoë snoring two meters away. My wife reckons the doves should start barking soon, so maybe it’s a mutually beneficial arrangement.
Zoë has this strange habit of storming and barking at something that gives her a fright. Like, for instance, a 75kg Boerboel dog name Bella. Bella was in a foul mood and did not take kindly to Zoë’s style. The next thing Zoë found herself being swung around in the Boerboel’s mouth, about a meter from the ground. Bella has since passed away, although not due to any endeavours by Zoë.
The same exercise more or less repeated itself when Zoë met the Bella’s replacement. Poena is a more docile version of the Boerboel that he replaced. Instead of swinging Zoë around in his mouth, he simply penned Zoë to the ground with his one paw, looking rather bemused. Poena’s less aggressive response might be due to the fact that he was only 15 months old, and weighed a mere 55kg’s at that time. It might also be that, due to the peculiar build of bulldogs in general, and Zoë in particular, he could not figure out which part of her could be classified as “neck” for purposes of taking a wee bite.
The other day my wife arrived at home with an ostrich bone for Zoë. She grabbed the bone and made off with it (Zoë, not my wife). It was a peculiar sight. The bone was probably twice her size, but she was careful not to drag it on the ground. Picture that. She took it to the far corner of of the garden. Munching away on the bone, she kept watching the house suspiciously as if expecting one of us to contend ownership of the bone. What were your thinking, bitch…..?
PGJ