dogs
At one point I pass by a small cluster of houses. There must be ten dogs there, and every one of them wakes up and starts howling for blood. My blood. But as I have seen elsewhere, these dogs are almost always behind fences, or tied up with chains to keep them out of reach. With one exception. In this particular village, I turn the corner and there is a full-sized, hideous yellow-furred cur standing in front of me, literally in the middle of the road, barking fiercely, and showing a lot of teeth. There are high walls on each side of the road here, and there is no way around this hell-hound. And there is no turning back.
I remember reading a book by a guy (Jack Hitt) who took the Camino Francés in the 1970s, long before it became “civilized” with the addition of tens of thousands of tourists. His book was the main reason I first bought a stick, for protection from Spanish dogs, which were not chained up at that time.
I now use the writer’s solution to my dog problem. I let out a fierce yell and jab my stick’s steel point toward the face of the yellow monster standing before me. I make it clear to him that if he gets any closer, it will cost him an eye. Growling and barking in undiminished anger, he jumps back; and as I move slowly around and then behind him, with that steel-tipped stick still in his face, he retreats. Crisis averted. I just hope that the next pilgrim to walk around that corner is also armed with a stick, and knows how to use it.
. . . . .
Today there is a series of near-perils from dogs. There seem to be more of them wandering around free today than usual. At one point, I hear a dog in the distance barking ferociously, presumably because my scent has reached him. At that point, I turn a corner and see a big, full-sized German shepherd in the road in front of me, pacing back and forth ominously. There is no easy way around him. I clutch my stick hard, ready for battle, and advance slowly. The dog looks hard at me. I say something to him, I know not what, in a language that neither one of us recognizes. I have no idea what those words were or meant, or where they came from. But the dog turns and walks away.
A moment later, when the barking resumes, I realize that despite his size and breed, the dog I saw was completely harmless. It is his psychotic brother, an almost identical twin, who has been making all the noise. Fortunately, the brother is locked up, on a chain behind a fence; and that is where the miserable bugger belongs.
About a half hour later, as I am walking down a narrow, peaceful country road, I see a huge blob of a German shepherd lying flat on his side, squarely in the middle of the (very narrow) paved road. Again, there is no way around him. I keep hoping that a BMW will come flying by and finish him off. But of course that is not going to happen, except perhaps in the movies. In fact, I haven’t seen a car of any description on this road in half an hour. (Many of the country roads comprising the Camino have almost no car traffic at all.)
I hope the dog is sleeping; and if he is, I will try to tiptoe past him. As I inch ever closer to him, he slowly moves around his head, which is still completely on the ground, and looks at me. I expect him to lunge up and ferociously attack. But as I move past him, stick at the ready, all he does is to move his head around again, so that he can continue to watch me. His entire body remains supine on the pavement the whole time. That’s how I leave him—lying on the pavement, looking more dead than alive, but with one eye open watching me, like a monster from mythology. I wonder if by now that BMW has roared by and carried him off to share the underworld with Cerberus. If that Spanish dog lies on the road much longer, I am confident that he won’t be able to open either eye again.