Travel well Jia Jia (The best bodyguard in the world)

It is a routine all my bodyguard dogs know by heart – when the master lays down on his camp bed for his afternoon siesta beneath the shade of a palm.

My orders are to protect him.

That was exactly what Jia Jia did when she spotted a full grown King Cobra slithering through the first parameter fence – somewhere in this newbie bodyguard Doberman brain, she decided not to alert the experience dogs – a breed that is accustomed to lounge indolently while I sleep.

You have spotter dogs like Jia Jia and the attack dogs who don’t use their radar ears as much as their muscular brawn – killing machines. Who would know exactly how to kill a cobra like a mongoose – every so slowly and suddenly with a strike three fingers from the head.

That at least was what Jia Jia was supposed to do – to just raise the alarm. Instead she decided to take a full grown cobra. And by the time she had killed it – it seem like we all there just looking a Jia Jia as she held the dead snake like a trophy.

I felt proud. As my dogs are not just dogs. It is very difficult to describe to city folk the closeness a farmer shares with his dogs. In the movie “I am Legend,” starring Will Smith – it’s just a movie to all of you. But to man like me who often feels he’s like the only man on this planet all the time – as that is what commercial farming imposed on the man – the very idea that his spatial perception along with scale can all together be pushed to a point where it’s not unusual for this one man to spend the entire day walking around his plantation and not seeing a single person.

A solitary tongue of light. Desolation. The idea of a man who is just walking……but with his dog.

I will stop here. As it suddenly occured to me none of you can possibly understand how close I am to my dogs.

They are my friends like the birds and trees. Kindred spirits cut from the same cloth.

That is why it was so terribly sad for me to realise Jia Jia had been bitten – and from the looks of it, it was full bite.
I realise then it was over.

Travel well my friend….travel.

Life is cruel!

Darkness 2013