When dogma and karma collide

Mar 02, 2009 Features / Columnists, Tony Deyal column

---

Our little dog Crix, named after the biscuit with its shades of brown that many southern Caribbean people consider their “vital supplies”, is singular both grammatically and dogmatically.  Dogmatically, in this context, does not come from “Dogma” meaning the female progenitor of the dog in question, or the code of belief which stubbornly collides with karma to produce what in Hinduism (and Buddhism) is known as “dharma” or the truth about the way things are and always will be.
In my case, while I believe what will be will be, things aren’t what they were.  My wife Indranie is in Guyana attending the funeral of her younger brother.  It is a time of desolation for her, and has been traumatic for the family.  Even Crix seems to feel the loss, particularly since Indranie is not around to look after him and engage him in meaningful conversation, albeit in low tones, a technique called “dog whispering”.
The problem of having a singular and singularly playful dog in the absence of its whisperer is that, lacking patience and not being, in the animal minding sense, “petty” or inclined to “pettiness”, I am a “dog shouter”.
The worst part of the deal is that, with only one canine on the premises, the plurality of the chorus of the Anselm Douglas calypso made famous by the Baha Men is reduced to the plaintive interrogatory refrain: “Who let the dog out?” “Me sah, is me who guilty sah, is me who do it.”
The incredible part of it is that there I am, leash in hand, waiting every morning in the cold Atlantic breeze, while Crix answers a call of nature which he did not initiate and for which I am the switchboard and the dial tone.  Some mornings I get a busy signal while he rummages around in search of whatever dogs seek out, which could be anything from the insubstantial sound of one hand clapping to the lizard which he is certain is lurking there under the twig for him to chase.
Other mornings, particularly when the cold bites through his shaggy coat, it is hello, goodbye, and back into the house.  Night-time too he snuffles and shuffles as I tie his leash and take him outside. He keeps trying to pull the leash out of my firm grip which I tighten, because I know if he escapes I will never be able to catch him.  He is faster on his four legs than Jasmine on a bicycle.
Blundering around the bougainvillea would make me even more prickly than if I swallowed a case of Viagra and chased it with Cialis.
As I wait on Crix on those days when what I thought was a call was essentially a wrong number, I take some slight philosophical interest in the negative connotation of the phrase “a dog’s life”.  Crix gets two meals a day.  On those days when it is pure, unalloyed dog food from the big bag that we buy, he turns away in disgust.
If my children even think of doing that to their food, Indranie would jump on them immediately, and even I would join in with tales of poor starving children elsewhere in the world, and stories of our deprived childhoods when we would have been glad for such luxury as broccoli or eggplant.  No such lecture for Crix.
At the first sign of déjà food, Indranie fries an egg and mixes it into his menu. She saves bones and bits of left-over chicken, and even buys what in our day was a human staple, chicken-backs-and-necks, for dog food.
Crix hangs out in the covered verandah during the day, is let loose into a spacious yard during the afternoon, and sleeps inside on a warm rug in the corridor between the kitchen and laundry room.  If he barks at night we rush out armed with such weapons as we can lay our hands on because, as Indranie insists, “That is his guard dog bark!”
The thought of Crix as a guard dog is not exactly reassuring, but any dog can bark behind a double-lock and burglar-proofing, and Crix makes up in volume what he lacks in size (something one can say about Basdeo Panday and many other regional politicians).
It is interesting, too, the way some other misconceptions about dogs have become ingrained in our language.  We talk about “dogged determination” and people proceeding “doggedly” with a task. Whoever introduced that allusion was under an illusion; whoever made that metaphor was, if not mendacious, misguided.
Perhaps those who associated dogs with steadfastness of purpose or with having a one-track nose were using bloodhounds as their model and not a half-Pekinese, half-Pomeranian or “Pompek” mutt.  All I can say for a fact is that Crix is consistent with the first three letters in “dogged”.
It is the other three that he is not too crazy about.  He would start a game of fetch the ball at a furious chase.  My son Zubin would smack the ball to all parts of the ground but would either have to ignore it or fetch it himself after the third or fourth volley.  Crix generally has other fish to fry, butterflies to chase or sticks to chew.
I suppose if J.K. Rowling can end her Harry Potter saga with a “half-blood” Prince, maybe we can boast about a “half-blood” hound.
The other sort of wrong-sided one is that “curiosity killed the cat”.  If that happened, it took place after the dog died of the same cause.  Crix and every other dog I have known are more inquisitive than the National Enquirer, more prone to investigation of exotic phenomena than UFO hunters. If our police pursued enquiries with the same zeal as Crix, every crime in the Caribbean would have already been solved, some before they were even perpetrated.
Crix takes off on a whim and a whiff without the slightest hesitation, guilt or doubt.  A sound, inaudible to us, would have him rushing to the gate barking. He almost died from eating rat poison left under the big neem tree in our yard by a rat with an IQ of over 145.  We had to give him Vitamin K for several weeks. Fortunately, he and his curiosity survived to fight another day.
I think by now that we in the Caribbean who habitually refer to those we consider ungrateful as “nasty dogs” also realize that having given dogs a bad name we have made a mistake.  There is no creature on earth more grateful than a dog.
No animal in existence ever gets more mileage from a solitary act of kindness, love, affection or even indifference than a dog.  Then there are those who describe women lacking in pulchritude as “dogs”. They ought to be spayed or neutered.
Every Jack has his Jill, and every Rover has either a Land or a Range with it. Every dog has his day and every Crix has his deity – Indranie, and if she is not around, any of the rest of us will do.
*Tony Deyal was last seen with his dog on a “leash” or strap that attaches to the dog’s collar and enables it to lead its owner where the dog wants him or her to go. Some dogs understand that, if they wait patiently with leash in mouth when their owners come home from work or school, it would immediately make them feel so guilty that the walk is lengthened by at least 15 minutes.

---

---