During our stay in that village,
Rebkong, we had many little adventures; some of which included playing guitar
to the village people, cleaning up the trash littered all around, listening to
the wise teachings of Dr. Nida, and adventuring the large hills, getting to
know my new friends more and more.
Once, we got trapped inside our
family house…. By the wild, insane dog! I swear, this dog is maybe the size of
a… fluffy, black, vicious groundhog? But oh man is he fierce. Every time you
would come as close as a five feet radius away from him, he’d start barking off
his silly head and wildly running at you, only to be stopped violently by the
small leash holding him back. A very thin
leash precariously looped over a stick in the mud. And let me tell you. Dogs in
Tibet are meant for guarding, whether they’re big or small. Most of the other houses
owned crazy, ferocious mastiffs that would eat you alive if ever given the
chance. So naturally Ethan, Soan and I were the only ones in the house when its
starts raining profusely and we start hearing… what’s that? What’s that? God no, it couldn’t be barking… Yeah… It’s
barking…
We started hearing BARKING coming from literally all around.
That must mean he’s
off his leash. Oh god. Yeah. He’s off his leash.
The absolute horror I
felt when we peeked past the large wooden door, the comforting shield from us
and the barbarous outside, and saw the leash laying limp in the wet mud, and echoing
barks roaming freely from the hills, was immaculate.
“Shit!” we were a bit panicked. I start laughing like a
maniac and then I stop, pulling myself together. “Uh, we should find him?”
What if the family comes back and with our non-communicative
skills, we have to sign language talk ourselves an excuse why their small
little dog is off destroying houses and instilling blood-curdling fear? (Okay,
he really wasn’t that scary, but I’d
hate to encounter him in his newfound independence.)
So we go on a mission, a search for
the savage (but oddly cute) little dog. We crept out, and immediately we ran
inside like our asses were on fire because, of course, the little yapper was
there barking his little jaws off, spittle flying right in front of the door, almost daring us to walk out again. Our search didn’t have to take us very far.
The little guy was practically waiting for us. So the boys have a brilliant
idea. Get him into the dung house! What’s
that, you ask? Well, I guess we had to figure out the hard way. Across the
courtyard from the house is this large sort of garage, but made instead out of
mud, and sticks for better insulation.
Once, a couple nights before that
incident, we had decided to explore. So we went in, and we were pleasantly
surprised with the fact that the material we wrongly calculated as mud, was
actually dried patties of cow poop. Now for me, this is fairly normal. Being in
India so much made me immune to the frequent appearing of cow dung in daily
life (i.e. to make fire, to build houses, paper…) but for other people, I’m not
so sure it would be so comfortable to sit in a house made purely from the
grassy excrement of beautiful creatures. Anyway, the two of them grab this
long, smooth pole from inside. All the while, I’m muttering how incredibly
stupid this plan is to, of course, two pairs of deaf ears. What was their plan?
Ambushing the puppy of course. They gingerly stepped out of the shelter of our
house, with the long wooden pole held firm in front of them, and the growling,
teeth baring dog at the end of it. They jabbed at the puppy, in attempts at
scaring it, which did work for a little while. Suddenly, the dog took a wild jump and tried to literally attack the wooden stick! Ethan and Soan
shuffled back, laughing… and then they had a go at it again. This time however, they successfully corralled the sassy dog
into the dung house. It was a victory!
Our shoulders were relaxed in
relief, and we laughed at what had happened as we went back inside, incredibly
satisfied that we wouldn’t have to explain with charades to a family who comes
home to a missing dog.
A little
time passed, and all of the sudden we hear it…. again. Bark! Bark! Bark!
-panicked laughter-
“No way!”
“He can’t be out again,”
“Shit!”
But it was more like not
shit, because unfortunately, the little dog was no longer safely contained
in the dung house. And not anywhere in the courtyard either. Not in the garden.
Not in the little outside bathroom. I had scrambled, crouched and hollered,
trying desperately to find the small blur of bark and paw. Finally, I saw him
in the valley, a black blob of yapping freedom, running in the green fields,
taking sharp snaps at unimpressed, rumbling yaks. “Jeez…” I moaned in
hopelessness… How would we be able to get him again? And how on earth did he
manage to escape the dung house? We found out moments later, after inspecting
the house, that we intelligently drove the dog into a house with no back.
Literally at the back of the house, there was no wall, thus creating a passage
between the garden and the dung house. In other words, creating a perfect
escape for a small little puppy.
Unfortunately,
we had no plan B, so when the little dog came running up from the valley,
through the garden, to stand barking at us in front of the door again, we had
no choice but to flee back into the house. Later on, our house family came and
graciously restrung him to the stick in the mud, creating another temporary
bond to hold him and his yapping little mouth in his own little puppy home. At
the time, of course, it was horrifying and slightly exhilarating and exciting.
Now however, I remember that time and laugh… It was purely and ridiculously
humorous in the most stupid way. We found out later that he is often let out to
roam in the vast valleys of his home, free to explore the forests, the garden,
and yes, even the dung house, the place of his short imprisonment, if he felt
the need to.
There was
also a time when we got locked out of
our house, and we had to scale the walls, jump onto the roof, and either jump
10 feet into the inner courtyard of the house, or take the stairs. Another
time!
That’s just
one of the crazy little foreign doggy adventures that we’ve all had.
More to come~
Chandra xoxox
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