Dog's Life   ...

Also in the Philippines you have to protect your property. Safety measures can include a solid higher fence, a wall - provided perhaps with sharp glass or barbed wire on the wall coping - and dogs. The latter are here in the centre of attention. I can refer only to the dogs I come across during the visits of my relatives in rural Bicol. They have six dogs - really no beauties with their pale grey fur, but faithful servants.

In the past, they stayed during the day chained up to a shady bench. In the meantime they are also allowed to move in the yard. One dog enjoys the permission to lay under a bed, another - "Socrates" – is defending his seat on a plastic chair. Did he find out, that the elevated seat protects him better from the itchy bites of the sand fleas, which torment the other dogs so much? Again and again the internal hierarchy of the dogs has to be confirmed or overthrown by mutual attacks. The hierarchy becomes especially evident, when the food comes. It mostly consists of rice, vegetables and fish remains. In order to prevent their reproduction, the testicles of the males have been clamped and brought to fall by rubber rings in early age.

At first the dogs approached me hesitantly almost timorously. Nevertheless, It was really lucky that my leg was not bitten. They have never been spoiled as quasi children. I try to communicate with them, especially when conversation of the others in the yard appears only as a cloud of disentangled gibberish. It is not always advantageous to feed them with imported dog biscuits – they can follow all the time like magnets everywhere you go. If you sit down in the chair, then scratches can be the result when a "favorite" jumps on your knees with its extremely long, never cut claws.

During the day they are usually dozing. At times a dog leaves the house to control the district boundaries. If there is an offence, then the whole pack is chasing the intruder with loud barking. At night they lay in wait of troublemakers. They are barking out each passer-by and drunkard and the sleep of the house occupants gets unwanted cuts.

My wife is well familiar with the biographies of the dogs. Some have been blind, intelligent or famous for their attacks. In a corner of the garden, there must be a whole cemetery for the ancestors of dogs.

© Wolfgang Bethge