Dear dog owner, hold your dog biko – Lucia Edafioka

There are dogs and there are lion-dogs, abi what do you want me to call those huge monstrous animals people now keep in their homes in the name of pet dogs?

I have no problem with what you keep in your home, dat one concern you. My own is that you keep these wild animals away from people, especially children.

There is a house on the road I pass on my way home after work. In front of that house two huge dogs are tied to both ends of the fence. The house shares space with the walkway on the road that is meant for everybody. People who are not familiar with that house will casually walk by not seeing the dogs (they are hidden by some tall flowers) and the next thing the dogs will start barking, trying to pull free and attack the person walking by.

Last week an old man almost jumped out of his skin when the dogs tried to attack him. What if they had managed to pull free??? Shebi you people will come and tell the man ‘oga sorry’?

If these wild animals are not chained, you see their owners walking them on the same road where normal human beings are walking and then they will tell you to keep calm, it doesn’t bite.

Are you mad? Can you see those dark devilish eyes and long canines? I should calm down and casually stroll past because you said it doesn’t bite?

When I was in primary school, I hated mathematics so my Pops enrolled me in one of those home maths lessons. The thing was that after two hours of doing HCMs, and LCMs, we were always bored, but we found our entertainment in one of those lion-dogs people kept at home. That one’s name was Jaguar. After lessons, all roads led to Jaguar’s cage. We would go stand by the front of his cage, and make faces at him, dance stupidly, throw sticks at him while this dog would bark madly trying to pull free from its chain. The owner, hearing the persistent barking would come out and chase us away, but the next day would see us back. So one day, after two hours of doing long division we had energy to burn, we went towards Jaguar’s cage, before we even started our dance this dog jumped out of its cage.

My God!

We threw our lesson bags away, our books, pens scattered on the ground, and ran as fast as our little legs could carry us. Only one person was unlucky, Jaguar caught up with her, tore her clothes, its claws dug into her skin and it bit her on the bum before some men in the area got the dog off her.  No, don’t laugh, she was admitted at the hospital for a while but luckily she made a full recovery.

I understand that these kind of dogs are for security purposes. There was this man who loved dogs so much, he had different crazy looking breeds in two different sets – the normal dogs and the lion-dogs. The normal dogs he fed with home cooked dog food, the beasts he fed with raw meat dripping with blood. The dogs were over 20. The normal dogs roamed around during the day, they were nice, friendly, only barked mildly at strangers. But when it was 9pm, the beasts were let loose and they patrolled the compound. One day robbers came to ‘visit’ this man, too bad they didn’t do their research well. The lion-dogs pounced on them, almost ate them alive. It was people in the house who had to get the dogs off the robbers.

In the morning, people praised the dogs. One of them was shot by the robbers and the man did a small burial for him.

My only concern then and now is so you have man eating dogs in your compound? What of when the people who can control them are not around? What of days when you run out of raw meat? And you have little children in the neighborhood? Or you think these wild animals can tell the difference between thief, and neighbour?

There was a story in Punch some time ago, of a man who was employed to care for some lion-dogs. One day he went out to get their food, forgot to lock the cage, but before he returned the beasts had almost torn his little daughter apart. She later died in the hospital.

Dear wild animal owners, please keep your beasts locked up inside your compound and yes, you should also walk them inside your compound. Stop patrolling the streets with wild animals and telling people to keep calm, that they don’t bite, you hear?

Tenkiu.

 

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