-^-for posterity-^-

i said goodbye to my faithful dog, jota. he wagged his tail and obediently sat when i said to. his tongue hung out of his mouth like a pink spatula and his tail wagged like a propeller.

we drove to a small restaurant down a dusty road. it was the bottom floor of a tin shack. there were a variety of tables set up. they were all different and made out of various kinds of building materials. some were plywood, some were tin.

dog meat.

my friends ordered. we had boiled dog innards, fried dog flesh and a boiling pot of dog stew.

the first to arrive was the dog innards. it was a mixture of dog liver, heart and stomach. i sheepishly ate the liver and tried to avoid the stomach and heart. some found its way into my bowl, though, and i quietly ate them trying to think happy thoughts.

the next plate to arrive was the dog flesh, fried. it was very tasty once you got past the skin. dog skin is terribly tough and doesn’t make for good eating. it is tasteless but the texture is that of waxy plastic. the flesh is pretty good though.

the last dish to arrive was the dog stew. actually, it was young bamboo shoots and dog legs chopped up into small sections. it was rather like eating beef on the bone. the bamboo was quite good and i tried to avoid as much of the dog as is possible. julie was eating with us and shot me a look in the middle of the meal. she passed me something and it turned out to be a dog’s paw. the skin had been removed but you could clearly see the three pads that looked remarkably similar to the pads on jota’s feet. i lost my appetite.

as we finished we heard an incredible racket just past the wall we were sitting next to. it was a dog barking and someone yelling. the dog barked and barked. it was sitting right next to the disturbingly thin wall. there was a few whines and then silence.

it was terribly dramatic and didn’t help to settle the dog in my stomach. i could imagine the dog being killed, skinned and chopped up into bits.

we returned home and jota was faithfully waiting for us at the door with his tail wagging. he sprinted outside and ran about. he came back to us and sat at our feet as we talked. he didn’t know that we ate some of his own tonight and rather enjoyed it. he doesn’t know what kind of danger he’s really in.