Friday, September 20, 2013

Anything Can Happen in Cato

So life has been pretty standard lately, nothing safariesque to report. But yesterday was a pretty eventful day to say the least. Casey, Alie, and I were desperate for exercise yesterday so we decided to run around Cato.  Several unexpected and somewhat traumatizing events interrupted our lame attempt at fitness.  First, as Casey and I were running to pick up Alie, we stumbled upon 2 puppies that a family was considering adopting.  At first it was sweet and adorable, until we realized that one of the tiny puppies was so sick and shaking and none of the kids knew how to play with it gently.  It was so sad to watch and the poor little baby dog looked so helpless.  We ended up coming to terms with the fact that there was nothing we could do and proceeded on to Alie’s house with troubling thoughts. After we picked up Alie we ended up running around trying to get a better view of several fires we saw around the hills of Cato.  We eventually gave up when the twists and turns led us in circles so we just deemed them as controlled fires because nobody was panicking. 
            Ok, so our run was coming to an end, and just as were about to reach the field we noticed a small crowd around two dogs.  As one can guess, these two dogs were doing it. But it was the weirdest thing ever they were connected but back-to-back.  And just standing there.  Nothing was going on.  People were taking pictures and laughing and throwing water at them (which led all of us to yell the few zulu words we know at them). The poor, tiny female dog stood only on her front two legs, her rear legs shaking as they hung freely in the air. We soon realized that this was not natural and as more people gathered around the dogs became more distressed and in a way angry.  This was when we realized that they were not doing it anymore; they were stuck.  The male dog tried to lick the area of insertion, as Alie calls it, attempting to break free, but failing. 
            This was when I started to get real nervous.  This male dog was panicking and as more and more people came over he became more and more nervous.  Barking at people and making sudden jolts while dragging the poor female dog wherever he went.  I just need those not fully envisioning this to really have empathy for this female dog.  She was in a permanent wheel barrow position, backwards, being dragged by her vagina…..I’m shocked she is still alive.
Soon the male dog got so upset he ran across the street behind a gate in someone’s front yard and attempted to lay down and deal with the situation with a little more peace and quiet.
            This was when we decided it was time to intervene.  A man came out of the house and asked us how on the earth the dogs were connected and we had to awkwardly explain the situation and he decided this was not his cup of tea.  His statement sounded a little more like, “ohh shit I’m not dealing with that”.  So, we asked him to get us some vegetable oil and we were going to take matters into our own hands.  He laughed nervously as he went to fetch us oil.  In the mean time we figured we needed to calm down the male dog if anything was going to progress, so we sat on the ground and used calm voices while Alie got up and personal with his face, and was trying to get him to lay down and give his partner a bit of a rest (WHEELBARROW). At first he seemed to be ok, but then when Alie attempted to push on his back to tell him she wanted him to sit he FREAKED OUT and tried to bite her arm off!!! Ok that was dramatic, but he definitely snapped at her and jumped in the air out of fear thus releasing the female dog! The male dog was still freaked out and was going nuts and the little female dog was sadly running in fear while unidentified liquids poured out of her (I’m so sorry you had to read that, but we had to witness it so don’t even give me that).  After Alie heroically put her life in danger to save these sexually active dogs, we were congratulated by several hugs and arm grabbing from little children everywhere.  We decided to run over to the field to try to shake off some of the trauma we had acquired throughout our exercise and ended up joining the soccer team.  Casey and I are awful, and although Alie isn’t, it wasn’t entirely fair that we joined this very skilled boy’s soccer team, but they were all so nice to us anyway and still passed me the ball when I would completely miss it or pass to the wrong team.  I also feel its necessary to share that I have horrible anxiety while playing contact sports and cannot mentally handle someone running towards me at full speed with no feelings of love present.  But we even did the cool down run and stretch circle with them! They were so inviting. 

And that was my Thursday.  It was exciting, which was much needed after a really stressful work week that hasn’t been relieved by yoga nor mediation.
I’ll be heading over to Impendle and Umtwalume villages next week so I’ll be sure to blog after that.


Thanks for reading :)

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