Hard to be a dog-lover

Screaming canines feature prominently in the soundtrack of a Freetown night.

When night falls, the city's seemingly endless supply of strays stir from a day-long slumber that finds the brunt of them lying under trucks by the roadside, the fresh blood that stains their ears and back marking the only perceptible sign of life, marks of a recent skirmish.

Long after the sun has set and I'm inevitably the only one at my house still awake, I hear the dogs. They bark the loudest between 1 and 2 a.m., I find.

As I turn the pages in my book du jour by the light of my cell phone's built-in flashlight, the silence of a night free from the hum of electrical fans or the laborious churn of a generator is interrupted by a piercing shriek of agony almost as ear-splitting as it is heart-rending, and it's hard to be a dog-lover.

Just as it was hard to be a dog-lover this evening when I sat on my balcony and witnessed one of the healthier-looking dogs I've seen here being dragged the length of my street and back with a chain around his neck, an occasional kick thrown in for good measure. And no one on the busy street save for the three white people on their privileged balcony seemed to notice.

And just as it's hard to be a dog-lover as every day I witness dogs narrowly avoiding death because they're too stupid to get out of the way of oncoming 4x4s and poda-podas, obviously disease-ridden, with eyes thoroughly glazed over.

And as I lie in bed, basting in my own sweat while I reflect on the day and attempt to court sleep, another shriek outside my window signals a battle between two more mangy mutts. As sleep begins to take hold, I think to myself that maybe I'll have to unilaterally expand my mandate to Sentient Being Rights just long enough to cover this issue.