The Psycho Canine Gang

For the past few days I have been seeing the sun much lower in the east that I ever get to. My MDiv examinations are scheduled way up in the morning at around 7:00 am. I am a perennial slugabed, since my office starts later than other offices, and this time change in my schedule was really unwelcome. But fate had is such that I would need to get out from under those cozy sheets much earlier than I should have otherwise had to.

My exam timings are from 7:00 am to 10:00 am, after which I get some time to come home & have my mor-noon brunch. I can then leave for work. My examination hall is my local church, just 5 minutes as the wolf runs. The early morning bike ride helps me get rid off a bit of my slumber. But what really wakes me up is the Psycho Canine Gang.

As I ride into the compound of my Church building, (my church is located on the second floor of a commercial-residential building with other workshops & shops.) a gang of around 8 dogs attack me. I go to church on Sundays, & other days, but never so early. These dogs usually are silent & leave me alone. If one of them starts barking, I start whistling profusely, and this seems to pacify the mongrel. It then usually shuts up.

But this was different. Early in the morning these dogs seemed to go Mad. They surrounded me, gnarled and barked at me obstreperously. The first attack was when I was attending the first paper. The attack was led by a white bitch, (the other dogs were probably her kids) and these dogs knew no fear. I know that I am not an intimidating person, and friends would call me a teddy bear rather than a grizzly, but all said and done, I am six plus and almost weigh a quintal. No dog would take any ‘Panga’ with a person of this size, or at least that is what I thought. But these dogs were crazy (as I have said before). I had to stop my bike even before I got to the parking area and get off it, lest I find, stinky canines buried into my calf muscles. Initially I started whistling profusely. (I always whistle to pacify dogs that bark at me, and most of the time this tactic works). Most of the dogs went quiet, but one of the crazy dogs along with the white bitch seemed unaffected. The barking continued, and the dogs closed on me, one of them just behind me. I knew I had to get my hand to a stone, or atleast act as if I had found one. I did, and whack, I flung the stone at one the white bitch. I missed, and managed to scare off the other dogs. They kept barking and I kept looking for stones to fling. That is when the watchman of the building arrived with a stick & drove away the dogs. They seemed to recognize him and obliged with half-silence. There were muffled growls that still showed some defiance. But I wasn’t harmed by those dogs that day.

Later when I left after giving my exams, I observed that the dogs were all sleeping. None of them even turned to look at me. I wasn’t surprised. Because in the past, I always have seen the dogs sleeping, least bothered about me. Then what in the world stirred them up this morning, I though to myself. As I cautiously left the compound, trying to make as less noise as possible, the watchman waved at me, with a smile on his face.

“Darneka nahi, kattha nahi hai. (Don’t be scared, they don’t bite)” He said cheerfully. “These dogs are harmless”. I stopped the bike and paused to talk to him. I asked him why nobody drove these dogs out of the compound? He said, that the madrasi who owns a workshop in the basement of the compound regularly feeds these dogs. He has done this to put in place some kind of a security system. This, so that people don’t dare to venture into building compound. Now what kind of security system in the world was this? A bunch of mongrels?

Then I asked him about why these dogs attacked me in early in the morning, and let me go later on when I was on my way back. He told me that early in the morning, these dogs are un-fed. That is when they start behaving rabid. Anyone who enters their area is barked at. But later after the madrasi has fed the dogs, they cool down. They go to sleep. They aren’t bothered who comes or who goes. Cause they are full.

I thought of complaining to the municipality, but then after my exams were done, and after my altercations with the Psycho Canine Gang became a thing of the past, the desire to do so slowly went away. But one day I will get them. I will get the PCG, for what they did to me.