Walking Fiona

By Cong Coralles

IT took me a while to walk our Fiona around the neighborhood again. A fortnight ago, we had an unfortunate incident with a confused alley tomcat as we were about to climb back our stairs after the walk. I will not go into the details of what happened exactly, except that our new bitch is an American Pitbull Terrier.

I remember throwing up at the sight of blood and gore. I am not ashamed to admit that I was shocked at Fiona’s ferocity. However, now that I have had time to process that incident, I have learned a lot of things about Fiona in particular and dogs in general. Yes, through our nightly walks around the neighborhood.

My ex-girlfriend reminded me that Fiona did wag her tail and was kind of offering the mangled tomcat to me. But I was too engrossed at the sight and smell of blood that I hardly saw what Fiona was trying to do. She was trying to please me, as her new daddy. It was supposed to be a gift!

I’m familiar with dogs, mind you. Emilio used to have 14 dogs at one time in our Gusa residence before. All of them were stray mutts and mongrels but we loved them just the same. They somehow gravitated to our house and papa was kind enough to give them a home. I remember we would have dog poop scattered all over our lawn. But I was busy with school that I never had time to play with any of them except for one, Duffy. He was the biggest among the mongrels.

Fast forward to owning a dog, I had doubts if we were prepared to have a full-sized dog around our small house. For one, we don’t have a lawn to speak of. We are right smack dab in the middle of the city. But after seeing Fiona for the first time, I was so heartbroken at her condition that we accepted her and vowed we’d love and nurse her back to health.

Her body was ridden with really big ticks. I guess, big ticks because she’s a big dog. Worse, Fiona was so thin that you could see the outline of her spine and ribs.

Before when she was all bony and thin, Fiona was withdrawn and looked like she’s bored out of her wits. Now, that she has grown considerably faster than before, she is surprisingly bubbly. She is extremely kind to our Chewie.

Our first dog at the house, Chewie, is a mixed breed of Pomeranian and Shih Tzu. Understandably, she was annoyed, to say the least, at the sight of a new dog and a bitch, like her, at that.

At first, we were afraid that Fiona would mistake Chewie to a cat and devour her. But that fear gave way to laughter when we officially introduced Fiona to Chewie. Manang Rhona Canoy taught us before how to introduce a new dog to the family. She said you let the old dog smell the butt of the new dog.

Whenever Chewie would “visit” Fiona’s corner in the house, she would scratch Fiona’s face even though the latter would try to lick her profusely. We can’t stand it. It always makes us laugh that a big dog is being bullied by a much smaller dog. Maybe this is because Chewie took a stronghold at the house first. I guess, for dogs, size doesn’t matter in identifying who the alpha dog is in a household.

Fiona has also displayed one adorable behavior when I walk her through the neighborhood. As you may have surmised, Consolacion has a butt-load of stray dogs. There are too many dogs that my son has called the “kangaroos” (Read: kagiron nga mga iro).

 These mutts would growl and bark as Fiona and I walk by. What amazes me is Fiona’s composure through all of these. Sometimes, she would stop and glare at barking dogs which almost always silences them up. Sometimes, she wouldn’t even care to look at the direction of some barking dogs. By the way, all of them would always scamper away from Fiona, given the glare or not.

But when we go back to the house to retire for the day, Chewie, the in-house bitch of the household would be there to challenge her. Willingly, Fiona obliges her.

She is still on the leash right now but given the improvement of her social skills, we are seriously considering her to be free to roam the house. Of course, we’ll have to assess the structural integrity of the post-WWII house we are living in.

We can learn a lot from dogs. If I may paraphrase George Carlin’s lines: “They are decent people. When was the last time you heard of a (sire) hit his (bitch) after coming home? You haven’t because (dogs) are decent people.”

I used to think I understood the idiomatic expression — “dog eat dog.” This idiom is used to refer to a situation of fierce competition in which people are willing to harm each other to succeed. It is much like the popular, albeit misused idiom nowadays, “crab mentality.”

Now, after having two distinctly different dogs in the house, I say that idiom is a slur against dogs around the world. We seem to be attributing the dark side of human behavior to animals as if they willingly do the same. Pfft.