Sleepless Nights 84 - Dogs.

That's Babe. The late Babe, to be accurate.

You see, with the whole dogs suddenly being thrust into the centre of the spotlight nowadays, I thought I'd share a bit of a story. As usual, my stories are somewhat twisted and lacking a direct moral value. Oh well.

That's Babe. The late Babe. He died after eating poison that was left out specifically to kill dogs.

He was a lazy son of a bitch, you know. You throw a ball and he'd look at you as if saying 'Do I reeaaallly have to go fetch that?'. We got him when he was a pup and I'll be lying if I say I fell in love with that little bundle of howling noise immediately but... Family has a way of growing on you.

I used to make him the scapegoat of my secret smoking sessions. I'll sneak out of the house and have a smoke and my Mom would always seem to notice I was gone. Then I'll use him as an excuse. It was more than just that, obviously. I had a rough high school routine (Self induced, obviously) and he somehow became that person that I talked to. Admittedly, that's a bit crazy but hey, no complains here.

I can still remember sitting outside on the pavement while nervously smoking and having him run at full speed towards me. Then, after jumping around like a moron, he'd realise that I'm not going to play with him so he'd lie down beside me and breathe really loud. Probably a weird form of dog protest but hell, it always earned him some tummy rubs.

That's Babe. The late Babe. I kind of miss him.

I'm not going into details on how he died. Partly because it still haunts me and partly because I've already written down my thoughts here and I really don't want to reiterate. I remember being extremely angry, though. I can genuinely say that I have never lost my temper the way I did at that time and man, at that moment, the world became an ugly, angry, hateful place.

See, the point of this post is this: I'm the person who've seen what happens when all of this negative thoughts about dogs get taken to another level. And fucking believe me, I'll be damned if I were to let that happen again.

Simply said? I don't believe that it has anything to do with religion. I really don't and by God I resent that statement. What I believe the core problem is a lack of understanding, a belief in myths and fables and plain old stereotyping. And it all boils down to bad upbringing.

That's Babe. The late Babe. He should've survived.

I'm going to be incredibly racist here and believe you me when I say I don't give a flying fuck about the implications.

Have you ever observed a typical Malay when he/she comes in contact with a dog? No, I'm not talking about physical contact; to be honest, when an Alsation or a Rottweiler bounds towards me, I feel unnerved. I'm referring to, instead, to non-physical contact. Sight. Sound. Have you ever seen the spectacle? Let me just try and simplify it.

He/she sees/hears a dog. Immediate panic. Jittery jumpy jakunism. Immediate evacuation of the area followed by some good old bad mouthing and story telling about how dogs are the manifestation of pure evil.

Am I over-generalising? Yes. However, I write what I've experienced and while I'm sure (Not really) that not all Malays are like that, the numbers speak for themselves.

See, this is where I try to explain why I don't believe it has anything to do with religion. I'm in a Muslim country and I see dogs everywhere. No one bats an eyelid. Hell, I've seen people feed the strays here the same way they feed cats. I've seen a woman in full burqa watching the sea from her balcony and beside her is the figure of a German Shepherd lazily gazing at the same view. I've seen men with mighty beards and bruised foreheads holding a leash in their hand and at the end of said leash is a dog.

And I've had Malays remark to me that those people aren't actually Muslim. Which is kind of odd, admittedly.

I'm not going into the whole debate on Islam and dogs because quite frankly, I'm not that learned upon the matter. However, I find it very, very difficult to accept that the Prophet (pbuh) actually went ahead and simply told his followers to kill dogs. Let's just keep in mind here that this man was quite simply, the greatest man of all and I cannot bring myself to believe that he is that shallow.

What the hell is the basis of such hate for this creature, then? Is it the stories? Dogs attack and kill people? Dogs being extremely filthy animals? Dogs being the herald for our buddy Satan himself?

Well, sorry to burst your bubble there but any argument against dogs can simply be applied to cats. Carrier of disease? We-e-e-e-ell you gotta see this picture, then.

I don't know about you, bub, but that sure as hell looks like a cat harbouring a parasite that can infect humans. I know this because I went through a hellish course in Parasitology.

'Oh,' you say, 'But it's written that if you keep dogs, angels don't enter your house'. Well, I can't really argue there, considering I haven't spoken to any angels before. Let me just use a very personal example, here. My Mother is quite simply, the most pious person I've ever had the pleasure to meet. I'm not talking about upholding the whole five pillars of faith; I'm talking about going the extreme mile here, fasting for three months straight, Qur'an always by her side etcetera. Obviously I don't have the mind of an angel but using my very flimsy logic, it's kind of a flaw in the system if angels don't look over my Mom's shoulder once in awhile. And on that note, really, I thought our prayers were directed to God. Not angels.

You see, my brother believes that the solution to this problem is to educate and I partially believe in that, really I do. I believe that children should be exposed to these matters but if the people responsible are adults, I'm not going to fucking take that road. I'm, quite simply, not that noble.

If it was up to me, I would've killed the bitch who poisoned Babe in cold blood. I would've poured poison down her throat and watched her writhe and flop while gasping for dear sweet air and that would make me very happy. There is no excuse for this kind of behaviour. These people should be flayed and then fed to the wolves piece by piece, limb by limb while they are still alive. I can come up with at least two hundred punishments that would seem fitting for this type of behaviour.

You see, it's not because I love dogs.To tell you the truth, I love dogs as much as I love cats. And squirrels. And birds. And other animals. I'm not doing this to defend my notion of the most perfect animal, I'm doing this because it is such a fucking blatant bias.

Really, an animal created by God is somehow transformed into an animal that insults the religion? I mean come the fuck on. I can't even insult that notion, it's just incredibly stupid.

Now I'm going to go on a much broader scale and say that it's not just the Malays. It's us. Humans. Fucking decrepit humans. The virus of nature. I had another dog. A mongrel.

We called him Brandy.

You know what happened to him? Poisoned. Again. This time, by a Chinese witch.

I wasn't there when it happened so I managed to take that blow much less severely than Babe. It's still hurts like a bitch, though.

You see, what other people might see as creatures of lesser importance... We regard them as family. Babe was the little lazy retarded brother that I secretly wish I had. Brandy was the slightly insane uncle that deep down I loved. When they died, I literally grieved. I mourned the loss of family member.

The funny thing here is... I wasn't even exposed to dogs until I was well into my teenage years. I remember seeing Brandy for the first time and being genuinely scared of that puppy. He was a bit of a rough one, to say the least. You know what my Mother did? She took me to this strange somewhat aggressive puppy and she told me to hold out my hand so that Brandy could smell it. That's it. Exposure. It's as simple as that. This went on for quite awhile... And I think it wasn't Brandy who was being accustomed to my presence. It was me. I was the one who was being trained.

That dog didn't go to school. That dog didn't get a training in being civil. That dog didn't learn how to eat with its mouth closed. That dog wasn't taught how to think and be rational.

I went through all that. We went through all that.

And yet at the end of the day... It's always depressing to see how we are the ones that act like animals to them. We with our fucking PhDs in fucking god knows what specialty and our ethics and our civil manner... We're are the fucking dogs here.

Now you tell me how that makes sense.

That was Babe. The late Babe. That was Brandy. The late Brandy. They didn't deserve to die.