Daily Report: To Give The Poor Dog A Bone

Another morning, another walk with Tyson, and more photos. Don't worry: it's a small village; I'll run out of things to photograph soon.

Being Saturday morning, the school was empty, so I stepped inside the school yard with Tyson and took a picture.

Filipinos are convinced that Tyson will attack them, swallow them whole, and poop them out as rabies-infested chunks, and so they run screaming from him whenever he comes prancing down the street. Tyson of course is much more interested in sniffing garbage and other dogs genitals than eating people, but that doesn't convince anybody. What's really frustrating is that the streets are filled with people's dogs running around loose, and nobody pays them any mind. I think it is the misconception that since Tyson is on a leash, he must be dangerous.

Well, people are seeing us walking every day, and they are slowly coming to the realization that Tyson is harmless... or at least harmless when he is for a walk on his leash. I wouldn't want to dissuade anybody from the deadly possibilities of hopping over the fence to my house at 3 a.m. to pay Tyson a visit.

I walked down to the market and bought some pig bones for Tyson from the butchers there. They gouge me a bit, charging me 15 pisos (35 cents) for something that they were only going to throw away to the other stray dogs waiting around. No big deal.

Tyson walked the entire way home with a fleshy scapula and dangling sinews gripped tightly in his huge teeth, tugging along at the leash as happy as could be. As Tyson pulls on his choker collar, his breaths become heavy, loud, and labored... less like a panting, and more like the sound from a horror movie where the soon-to-be-eaten characters can only deduce the presence of the ravenous monstrosity stalking them by the amplified sound of its fetid breathing. The mouth-breathing, big-toothed, bone-crushing, drooling-bloody-chunks Tyson is probably not the best image to proffer a population whom I am trying to convince of Tyson's benevolence. Heheh. No really, ma'am, he's a very friendly dog. Can I help you climb down from there?

I stayed home last night and ate pizza and watched Star Trek with Bird. Epril went into CDO to visit with the Expats Ladies. I told her to be home at 9:00. Something happened last night which has never happened in The Philippines before: At exactly 9:00 on the dot, Epril arrived home. That's right... A Filipino actually arrived precisely on time last night. You see? The law of Filipino Time can actually be broken.

Here is a 360-degree view of the view from the rooftop garden of my house. One of the local high schools is having band practice at the city park nearby.