Sky News reports how a dog ate a drunken man’s toe and saved his life. For further details for the full story visit: http://uk.news.yahoo.com/5/20100804/tod-dog-saves-drunk-man-s-life-by-eating-870a197.html
A dog is man’s (also woman’s) best friend and many stories feature highly impressive and selfless acts of service by pet dogs which have the special sense and can alert people on forthcoming dangers. Dogs have pulled their owners out of buildings before an earthquake. I have heard about the dog that wailed everytime he put his head protectively on his owner’s chest. She decided to take medical advice and was diagnosed with breast cancer. Not to mention the dog in the bollywood film ‘ Noorie’. Some friends thought it was hilarious but they had forgotten about the stories of Lassi, the wonderdog in the television series of the 1970s!
Those of us who grew up in East Africa also know that the Sikhs had special liking for the amber liquids, sometimes referred to as ‘daru’. Many a Sikh thought that their Gujarati friends or neighbours were inferior because they did not eat meat and did not take beer or waragi, the Ugandan white spirit which was extracted by fermenting bananas. Indeed, I witnessed a fair amount of drinking in our own extended family and when a person is fully sloshed out, he or she does not remember that they are Sikh, Hindu or Christian. Drink is a wonderful unifier. The Gujaratis decided that the Sikhs should no longer have the competitive advantage. Today many Sikhs have considerably scaled down their drink but the Gujarati is still trying to beat the much defeated Sikh in a race which will end badly for both.
Now imagine having a dog that has a better sense of perceiving risk and danger and is aware that his owner is exposing himself to huge risks by reaching out to the bottle every day. The Sikh’s dog could become the ‘daru-meter’ and when the owner has reached a critical limit the dog would bark incessantly or better still steal the bottle and dump it into Lake Victoria. Being environmentally conscious, the dog would make sure that the bottle top is tightly shut to make sure that there would be no more possibility of creating crocodiles with a drink habit. It would also be unfair for the dog to selfishly save its owner but instead to expose the fish to the dangers of alcohol. If you have been reading so far, take a boat ride along the banks of the Nile just after crossing the famous Bujangali Falls and be prepared to see crocodiles nursing their hangovers by drinking alcohol which leaked from the bottles. Then keep a lookout for the dentist birds which help the crocs to keep their teeth clean; they may also get knocked out by the whiff of alcohol from the mouths of the helpless reptiles as they slowly recover from the sardarji’s bottle. It may take time for the crocodiles to adopt a dog but there are some problems of sheer practicalities…drunken crocs also get very hungry in the same way that many men do.
The spillage of oil following the accident at BP’s drilling station off the Gulf of Mexico has been no joke. It has remind us about the dangers of environmental pollution and also brought the local economies to a virtual standstill. Thousands of acres of prime land may have been permanently destroyed after the oil slicks have washed onto the shores of the American states which share the coastline. However, there were no reports of the inlets of Lake Victoria being polluted by the alcohol bottles hurled downstream by angry dogs who were trying to save their Sikh owners. It just happens that the dog is such an intelligent animal that other dogs belonging to drinkers from other communities have also jined the ‘save my owner from drink campaign’. There are some dangers lurking around; not the crocodiles but the law. In the event a link could be proved, who would the leader of the country sue for polluting the lake? The dog who throws away the bottles of drink or the owner who buys them? The smartest lawyers would have to prove wilful damage but the problem is that owner could claim loss of capacity apart from passing out and the dog is only doing his job; in fact obeying orders in the course of duty.
Given all these challenges, let the sleeping drunkards lie. We only have to ensure that the dogs also do not fall asleep by being so close to their owners who smell like a distillery. Now this story is definitely true in that it was narrated by my late brother. He and his friends went for a picnic on the shores of Lake Victoria at a campsite known as Kazi, about 20 miles from Kampala. There was plenty of food and …drink and the revellers had a jolly good evening. No one felt the mosquito bites that started as darkness fell but when they woke up in the morning, they saw thousands of mosquitoes which had passed out after biting the drunken party goers. We will need someone to verify this because the Sikhs may have inadvertently discovered how to control the spread of malaria. It is not known how many mosquitoes recovered from their drunken ordeal and flew awayto safety but there are signs that since that day fewer Sikhs have malaria.
(It is not my intention to insult anyone. This story does not have any resemblance to people, dogs or mosquitoes which may be dead or alive. The article has been written in good faith to celebrate the innumerable acts of kindness by dogs to save man’s best friend, the bottle). Sorry, please delete the word ‘bottle’ and replace it with ‘dog’ in the previous sentence. Thank you.
