The thing about Zozo

So, Zozo is my big sister’s new dog. She’s now one year and without a clue about it. She loves with all her heart, she likes to run and play and she’s only slightly afraid of cars that rush at her[that being just me].

But those are the few good things about her.

She has some horrible traits.

Zozo hasn’t mastered the art of going outside and has taken my sister’s bed and brother’s bed as the occasional piss/poop point. We’ve discussed it and she’s decided to leave my bed alone. She also licks a lot of things, which was fun of course until I watched her one day licking her own puke at which point I decided my face was out of question and so was the rest of me. She also whines a lot, she’s afraid of my cat Twain and worst of all she’s a dog.

I’ve never loved dogs, in fact Zozo is lucky she came at this time of my life, my heart has softened.

I never always hated dogs though. It all started when we moved to the big house and we got our first dogs. I was super excited and not really sure what a dog was like at the time. I didn’t want to continue on my streak of young impressions or I’d be looking around in the super market for Scooby Snacks.

We got three dogs, Chaos [inappropriately named by my brother to make him sound tough yet he turned out to be the sweetest of all three], Rambo [dad’s idea, don’t even ask] and Lu [the only girl and named by me because I was really into ‘Mike, Lu and Og’].

I loved Lu with all my heart. First of all, I thought I had given her the prettiest name and she was the only girl dog. I thought we’d be BEST FRIENDS FOREVER. How did I know that she wasn’t chanting the same thing I was but rather was going all ‘best friends? Never!’

Also, they were all being trained to be guard dogs. I was eight what did I know?

So, they grow up and they grow up real fast. One day I’m feeling really jolly, it’s Saturday, mid morning and I have decided to visit my family- friend, namesake neighbour to enjoy the rest of the day with her. I skip out of the house, skip out onto the lawn and it all happened so fast, but of course in slow motion [most of my moments happen in slow motion, you’ll come to learn].

Out of nowhere, a dog appeared from my right side. I turned to face it, saw Lu, looking all fierce. My heart rate increased my sense to run out the door decreased and I instead ran backwards. I was in sandals, not really your day to day running shoes, and they were slowing me down. Also, Lu was pretty fast.

Instead of running to the recently opened front door of the house [and later learning that they had been taught not to go too close to that particular door] I ran to an abandoned car [Sparky] we kept for memories, and there were memories. The car of course I didn’t think to open and so I was trapped in between a rock and a hard place, actually a dog and a sad case.

Lu proceeds to jump up and give me a little face to face action. The next thing I knew, I felt pain, I heard the watchman cry out in his hero moment and his only one to this date and Lu got off, victorious.

“Ameniuma! Ameniuma! She’s bitten me!” I cried out in my very non Kiswahili sounding voice. The watchman came up to me to inspect the wound. His reaction perplexed me. Why the hell was he laughing at a little ten year old girl? Did he really think it was funny? Huh, was there a law against watchmen who laugh at innocent, hurt, little girls with pretty ponytails and awesome sandals? “Mbona unacheka?” I asked wanting to know right there and then what was funny.

“Hajakuuma.”

Say what? That can’t be right? I was there when it happened.

Apparently so was Lu and all she did was scratch me; a scratch not even deep enough to have bled for a microsecond.

What???

I didn’t take this too well. I told my family-friend, namesake neighbour that I was skipping our meeting. I went to my room and pondered over my battle wound wondering about Lu and her mistaking me for an escaping burglar in the daylight.

She ruined things for dogs everywhere.

And consequently I stopped loving her because she attacked me.

Also, she had puppies… Chaos you bad dog you!

Then she ate them all…yuck!