In the USA a dog is indeed a man’s best friend. That cliché is played out in no uncertain terms in homes that have dogs as pets. Even kids find them to be cuddly creatures and when one of these animals dies, it’s like another human being has bowed out. Sometimes, there is the feeling that a dog is given preferential treatment over humanity itself. Groomers make millions each year because each dog owner is prepared to spend his bottom dollar on making a dog look its best, something that he might not even treasure in himself. A dog owner spends more than he is willing to collect for each child in his tax refund each year. It’s like the owner frames the exhortation to look after your dog and your dog will look after you. A dog is lucky to be born in the USA because in other places of the world, he longs for even a bone.

In a place like Jamaica, for instance, there’s no dog-fighting ring, though now that it had raked in millions for the authors of this destructive reference, who is to tell what some Jamaican copycats might be thinking? I wouldn’t put my neck on the block that there’s no law to prevent this from happening, but I would definitely be surprised if there is too. Here in the USA, though there is no law to prevent humans fighting in a ring putting big bucks in organizers’ pockets, you can guarantee there is one to put people like Michael Vick, the pro footballer, behind bars, when he used his basement as a pork-barrel bonus to collect extra cash. Hence, a dog is privileged in the sense that if you are compared to one, you should just take that as a compliment. In Jamaica, if such comparison is made even playfully, that can kick off a fight that could result in even death. That is because a dog is usually in bracket with the most deplorable bird in the island; a dead carcass scavenger called a John Crow (picture seen below).

That’s a bird that flies scouting out fields and fences, eyes almost blinded by some yellowish-white excreta, looking for decomposed carnage. If you have a dead dog or any bit of unwanted spoiled meat, just simply leave it out in the open, and in no time, these birds sense of smell captures the aroma from way up in the sky. Incredible! A dog is looked at in a similar light since it walks around eating human excrement from time to time. Sometimes people get a call from nature at the wrong place and at the wrong time, and they just must deliver their load. Then a dog’s sense of smell picks it up from a distance, and it would travel miles away to have a feast and even a bath in the remains. When it returns, the stench causes the owner to want that dog’s neck so badly that it has to stay away until it cleans up its acts. In the meantime, it watches the house like a hawk at nights, chasing unseen forces round and round the building, down the hill and up again, sometimes losing its voice in the process when its contender obviously lashes back. As the owner, on a moonlit night, you peep through the window to see what is causing the dog’s annoyance, but your vision can never be as clear as that of that watchful animal.

It brings this essay to the eating habits of a dog in Jamaica. It is widely believed that feeding a canine too much prevent it from watching the house. As a result, a dog is left to roam about to fend for itself. Sometimes, it doesn’t even want anything to eat either. On a day like that, the dog would stand up in the yard, put its nose in the air in putting his sense of smell to work, sniff a few times before walking off in a particular direction. If you follow closely behind, it will take you where there is a type of weed that it crops off and swallows. Then in the few days that follow, it doesn’t eat anything, no matter how much chewed bones are on the ground. Speaking about that, people hardly possess a plate for dogs. They just throw what they have on the ground and ‘whosoever will, may come’, including chickens and all. Hence, the dog sometimes compete with other animals such as fowls, straying pigs, and even the person providing the bones, because if that’s a bone lover by nature, by the time he’s finished masticating, there’s really nothing left to go to the dogs.

There must be a time when adaptation takes effect because if you should treat a dog too well there, it is as though that brings about an a posteriori conclusion to its life. Looking back now, I was perhaps a teacher’s pet in high school, and for that, my principal gave me an Alsatian dog. Normally a mongrel was what the ordinary folks were accustomed to keep at home. If you were lucky to afford one with a fancy name like German Shepherd or Doberman, you were thinking somewhere in the vicinity of the rich fishes. I was therefore more than fortunate to have gotten one for good behavior in 1979, and I named her Clover because I thought she was indeed special. She was only three months when she came to me, but her paws were up to my face when she stood on her hind legs, a very active hound indeed. I was young then, but I gave her everything I had. I bought meat from the butcher’s to make her a life of contentment. I also bought tablets to take care of her health, showing my elation. She shared my veranda, what else could she have asked for? I couldn’t say she didn’t thrive at first, but then after about a month, she started losing weight. And she dwindled and dwindled, until the almost seventy-pound dog came down to pure skin and bones. The day Clover died was such a damper for me because, apart from missing her immensely, I didn’t know what to tell my donor. I held that man in very high esteem and didn’t know what he would have thought of me letting him down like that.

“How is Clover?” asked Father. P.

“Oh, she is doing fine,” I replied.

I went around for an entire year on a guilt trip, and I graduated without saying a word to my role model. But before I reached that finale, I was passing a house on my way to school when I noticed that one of those very big dogs had littered. I wanted to replace Clover so badly before Father P found out that I risked asking a perfect stranger to give me one as soon as those, eyes still closed at the time, were ready to be weaned. Luckily, the lady agreed and I got another pedigree dog, though of a different breed. The time came and I took that one home. It didn’t take away the pain I felt during Clover’s bereavement, but it certainly eased it somewhat. I didn’t even get a chance to name her or anything. To my surprise, she passed on in a similar fashion, while caring was still at its zenith.

To this day, I often wonder if my former principal ever suspected that I was hiding something, since I saw him on so many different occasions, and didn’t mention anything about Clover. He’s still alive and I hope that one day soon I will get the opportunity to tell him before it is too late.