A Day in a Dog's Life

A dog used to roam in my father’s compound (it’s his compound because I am past that age of recklessly using the word ‘our’). The dog had a name. Sura Mbaya. I will not dwell on how it got the name, because, just every dead human being, I am obliged to speak glowingly about it. Sura Mbaya did not act like a typical dog. To it, every stranger was a familiar, or he was just looking for someone familiar. People that roam in my father’s compound weren’t actually it first master. The first master went to jail for stealing cows. May be that’s why it looks for him in every stranger, only barking briefly before it remembers that it may be chasing its master and begins wagging its tail, as if to say in dog language, ‘I was only kidding.’or it may have been thinking that each stranger would give him a better name, or petition its change.

Well, Sura Mbaya was only good at three things- eating, shitting, and propagating its seeds. How did I know about the last one? It would disappear for days on end, and come back with bruises all over its body, but with a contented look in its eyes. From my experience, the dog world is a tough jungle because the bitches do not know anything about money. Instead, it’s about who has the strongest teeth, a menacing growl, and most importantly resilience. When the bitches emit the odour that tells other dogs that it’s that time of the year, a million dogs pick the oduor and follow it like that star that led them to where Jesus was born, only it leads them to where a million dogs, and one female have congregated for a night of brutal fights.

The lucky dogs, those which had had less fights during the day because their owners care about their conjugal rights, got their chances, quickly made out in their usual style that the dogs have been using for years, so much that human beings have aped it. I envy these dogs, except the brutality involved. There’s no one to tell them how it has to be done, because their females are yet to wear trousers and demand that dogs too have to take care of the cubs. But even when dogs attain that level of civilization, dogs will be dogs. Dogs will do their things and forget about it, and wait for the next time the female emits that oduor.

But woe unto us humans, we have to woo. I am not against the wooing, it’s the best part of living. What I am completely against are these human beings who want to tell how to do it. Experts. No, sexperts. Ever since the invention of the best thing after fire-the internet-you cannot rummage through the anonymous yet savage corridors of social media without stumbling upon headlines that explain how bedroom conquests should be done. Like, over time, we’ve grown progressively stupid in that department, so much that they owe our ancestors the need to re-educate us.