Dogs don´t like me

(longish bonus entry for the 28th, and for the dogs)

I haven´t been using my walking stick hardly at all the last couple weeks, but in a moment I can reach over my shoulder and pull it out of the side pocket of my pack. And why would I want to do that? To defend myself.

I have passed literally thousands of dogs in my walk across Spain. Most have ignored me, some have barked, some have strained against their chains in an effort to kill me. But until the walk from Finesterre to Muxia only two loose dogs (and most are loose) had charged me. After today´s morning walk I can add a dozen or so to that number.

The first attack came early. A large brown and white dog lay in the middle of the street outside a house; when I saw that our paths would cross I reached for my stick, merely as a precautionary measure. I thought I might slide by, but as I came close the dog rose up and began to growl in the back of its throat. I pointed the stick at it and tried to look menacing, but it rushed me anyway. I shouted "fuck off!" which is my standard request of an angry dog. It stopped for a moment, then rushed me again. I repeated my wish, this time puncuating the words by banging my stick on the pavement. The dog snarled, charged, stopped; I repeated my moves too--and after a few more dance steps backwards I was past and out of its range of concern.

Shortly after in a wood, I came around a bend in the path, on a stretch where tall ferns hemmed in the peregrino. I stopped when I saw two german shepards waiting for me a few quick leaps ahead. We looked at each other for a long moment... and then I said, "get on with you now." To my relief they complied, running up the trail before me and disappearing into the woods.

A few moments later, though, when I was stopped to have a pee, an ugly black and brown dog with death in its eyes came running silently up the path at me. I pissed all over myself as I hurriedly tried to switch hands from the little to the big stick. The dog turned around and ran back to its nearby house--to wait for me. And I had no choice, I had to pass its way. As I came alongside the farmhouse, the dog paced up and down a head-high wall, barking and growling and making ready to pounce on me. Luckily a man came out of a shed into the small adjacent garden, and he said something to dissuade the dog. The dog hesitated, clearly torn between the compulsion of obedience and the desire to rip out my neck. It seemed to be saying, "come on, man, I want him, I really want him. I need this, man, come on, come on! Let me do it, come on...."

Several times in the few moments it took me to pass I thought that its strong wish for my blood would win out, but just when the dog seemed ready to go ahead and be a bad dog the man would once again mutter some few words of remonstration, resulting in hesitation, just enough.

My day was quite tiring, not so much because of the thirty or so kilometers of walking, but because of the repeated experience of the fear response. When it looks and sounds as if a dog is going to attack, the fear starts up my spine, races up the back of my neck, and makes all my hair stand up as the terror rolls over the top of my head. This is draining and unpleasant.

The dog that interrupted my bathroom break lived in the small village of Rial. Picturesque, on a green hillside near the sea, with stone horreos half filled with corn--and way too many dogs. In Rial, and actually across all Galicia, it seems as if every house has at least three dogs, often more. There were lots of cats too, but they give one no trouble. So, I hadn´t gone another fifty feet in Rial when another dog came around a corner barking and snapping, ready for mayhem--and came to the end of its chain. All right, thank you (though my hair still did that standing up thing). But a half minute later, when I turned to walk past a small sawmill, two more loose dogs had at me. Fuck! I made a feint back and this scared off the larger of the two, but the smaller one and I dodged down the street lunging at each other, it barking, me yelling.

Maybe this is getting repetitious, but I´m not done.

I did have a respite for some time. As long as I wasn´t in villages or walking past houses I was fine. The woods were my refuge. And then I came down to Marineto.

I made a wrong turn and passed a group of farm buildings set down below the road. When I came into view of the front of the house, four dogs, graduated in size from smallish to giantish, jumped up and dashed up the hill at me barking bloody murder. Again the smallest was foremost. But I got past with a few jabs of my walking stick. I had surprised them and was nearly by when they reached the road. Imagine, then, my great sadness when after a kilometer or so I realized I had gone the wrong way and I would have to return to Marineto. The dogs were ready the second time, and it took more fencing work and more repetitions of various forms of the word "fuck" to get past them again.

The road led downhill and just five minutes later into another tiny village, Figueiroa. By this time I was dreading all built structures. The road narrowed to a ten foot wide lane between low stone buildings, and at the other end stood two dogs looking out at me. They barked with vicious intent as I came nearer their home, a home they were ready and willing to defend. I slowed, unsure.... But then a woman came out of a house and said a few words and the dogs moved aside, though they didn´t stop barking their displeasure with me. The woman said, "no problema" as I gingerly stepped past. Right. No problem.

Ten seconds later--and that´s not an exaggeration--I was set upon by a black dog in the most serious attack yet. This dog wasn´t kidding. It came in close and low, growling and snarling and baring its front teeth. I jabbed at it with my stick while taking steps backwards, but this only pissed the dog off more. In this moment I was truly terrified because it looked as if this dog was really about to take a chunk out of me with those bared teeth. Then I glanced over my shoudler and saw that there were three more dogs behind me. Shit, I thought, this is bad.

But just as I was looking for a wall against which to make my final stand, an old woman suddenly appeared, coming over a little rise from her garden below. She shouted at the dogs and they fell back. She looked at me and pointed to a turning I had missed while contending with the dog; I fled uphill out of the village, while she picked up a rock to throw at my would-be assasin.

There were a few other episodes, but you get the idea. I shivered to think what would´ve happened if I hadn´t each time been saved by the intervention (if nonchalance) of dog owners.

Later in Muxia along the waterfront I met a Spanish man named Danny. I´d seen him the day before in Finesterre, and he had made the walk to Muxia too, a couple hours behind me. We talked of the path, what we had seen along the way. At the end I said, yes, it was beautiful, but "muchos perros quieren matarme" (many dogs wanted to kill me). He laughed at my words, and then told me that he hadn´t had any trouble at all.