At some point in my short dog-walking life I have learn that some dogs pay no heed when Donna and I walked pass them. But sometimes, the dog reacts quite vocally. We had something like a German Shepard bark at us before. We met two small chihuahuas, one was curious but the other one in the owner’s arm started to cry like we are murdering it. It’s not about the size of the dog, not really. The biggest dog we ever walked past on the same park path looked more interested than aggressive, and Donna was certainly even more interested as well the way she was staring and tugging.
But nowadays more often than not, we just continue walking past the other dogs, whether they yelp at us or no. One reason being Donna’s mild kennel cough symptoms, which we wouldn’t want to expose other dogs to. The other being, I would prefer Donna to stay focused on the walk rather than get accustomed to stopping to check out every friendly or fierce dog on the way. It had never occurred to me to do it but when I read on this blog (which I have taken to stalking, omg~) that if there was already a dog on the sidewalk, they would cross the road to other side, I thought that’s probably a good thing to follow when necessary. (They are prolific posters so I can’t find the exact blog post :P).
We live in a flat situated in one of four apartment blocks that are connected on the second floor by a common carpark rooftop garden. Donna and I have been taking our short 10min walks here. We don’t see other dogs every time we are here, but when we do, it was always a toy or a small dog because these are HDB-approved. This morning there was a small brown dog with his owner. We saw them across the children’s playground in the middle of the garden so we stopped to see which side they would take. They went left, so we went right and arc-ed around the playground in the middle. The nice man gave us a smile and neither of us made to interact more than that or for our dogs to meet.
The garden is a pleasant place, especially when it is not dirtied by random late night parties where people leave trash all over and if you choose to ignore the small yellow puddles of dog pee on the wall, by the drains, by the corners of the stone seats. I really hate that so I always make Donna pee on the grass only. Although sometimes Donna will get overwhelmed by the other dogs’ scent and pee on the pavement quickly before I can stop her. And when I do catch her, she is already in mid-pee and I’ll overreact and immediately pull her towards the grass. So yes, it would look like a mad woman hauling a dog with pee drops flying in an arc as they flee towards the grass! I am so sorry fellow residents for the pee spray :( I always feel sorry afterwards for Donna’s poor neck too. Nowadays, once she starts to fixate on sniffing the concrete, I just make her sit. Though Mr P prefers to be mobile so he would shift her collar up her neck and shorten the leash so that Donna had no choice but to walk with her head up in the air rather than with her nose vacuuming the ground. So with time and between us, maybe we will slowly have a dog that as a way of life pee and poop only on the grass and can sit for a time with patience regardless of the distractions all around.
We had just walked past the playground when Donna’s nose started hoovering the pavement again, so I made her sit. I looked up to find an old gardener further up the path looking at us.
“That’s a mongrel,” he remarked. Yes, I agreed.
“She is local? A Singapore dog?”
“Yes” Online, people have called dogs like Donna the Singapore Special.
In the world of casual acquaintanceship, you can always strike up a conversation with some random stranger without ever knowing their names. You may even know their dogs’ names, but the humans, they rarely offer theirs and I never think to ask or identify myself.
That was how it was with this man, whom we shall henceforth call Uncle Gardener. It is common to see Indian workers clearing weeds, trash and basically doing all those cleaning and maintenance duties that our town councils have employed them for. Uncle Gardener is a true blue Singaporean, who tells me how he used to have a dog like Donna with sibuk or four eyes (if you count the distinctive tan spots above her eyes as eyes!). But his was a local short legged dog and smaller than Donna. They used to have so many dogs in the kampong (traditional village), called Johnny, Bobby, etc.
“Wait a minute, why do these dogs have English names?” I asked, “Didn’t they have names like Ah-Fu (Good Fortune) or Ah-Wang (Prosperity).”
Oh yes, he replied, Ah Fu, Ah Wang, Ah Or (Black), Or-Or (Black-Black).
I kept making Donna sit every time she stands up.
“What is her name?”
“Donna”
“Oh, Donna,” he proceeds to call her, “Donna, Donna, Johnny, Donny, Ah Or…”
Donna looks everywhere, distracted.
Uncle Gardener starts to tell me about the community cats that go to him to be fed in the morning. He thought they must have been abandoned, they were all neutered. He fed him with kibble, $8 a bag. No fish, he says, it’s too dirty if they leave the fish half eaten. They finish up all the dry kibble when they are hungry.
I remarked that Donna is a picky eater and wouldn’t eat kibble by itself.
In those days in the kampong, we don’t feed them in the morning or afternoon, Uncle Gardener said. We only feed them at night. They are hungry by then, they eat anything. All the day’s leftover food is slopped into a pail and all the dogs and cats go at it.
“What? Wouldn’t the dogs and cats fight if they have to all eat from the same pail?” I asked.
No, the dogs give way to the cats, said Uncle Gardener. At night the cats crawl into the dogs and snuggle against them to go to sleep. The dogs give way, raise their legs, adjust their bodies and sometimes they end up rolled over by the cat!
I was tickled and wondered how Donna would react if we got a cat.
“I used to have a dog just like her,” Uncle Gardener repeated, “but then the government relocated us to live in the flat. And I was told that it is illegal to take my dog with me. I had to leave it in the kampong and they rounded all the dogs up and took them away. I never saw it again.”
I felt bad for Uncle Gardener and didn’t know what to say.
She is a good dog, he said. These mongrels learn very fast and they are very obedient. Can you shake hand?
I walked Donna over and got her to offer him her paw to shake.
“She don’t know ‘shake hand’? ‘Paw’, what language is that?” he asked.
I explained that Donna was taught at the shelter to respond to ‘paw’. It means her foot.
“Oh, paw, paw…”
After sitting for so long Donna was restive so we said goodbye.
“She is a good dog, not like our neighbour’s dogs, always fighting and noisy.”
And so we part ways, but maybe we will meet again downstairs at the garden. Or maybe, we will make other casual acquaintances with their own story to tell.
And of course, people did and do use these dogs as guard dogs. On watsapp, a friend who saw her picture went, “hey, she looks just like our gaurd dog!” and promptly sent us a picture of her german shepard-mix rescue that her parents adopted.
