Skuski

If you’re ever faced with a dog in Nigeria, and it’s staring at you, you’re staring at it, you’re not sure what to do or where to turn. You’re sweating, it's barking, you’re moving back and it’s moving forward. My advice for you is — run.

Run.

Run as fast as you can, chances are it will run after you, and eventually give up if you’re lucky enough to be allowed refuge into one of the many shops on the streets. But at least you’ll still be alive, and not exposed to rabies, sepsis or even death. Dogs are cute. Dogs are man’s best friends, and that’s a worldwide fact. There’s no denying that these fluffy and loyal creatures were sent from above to provide companionship, and sometimes security. Dogs have saved lives, brought back meaning and a sense of purpose to some and helped with those suffering from mental health issues. Dogs are angels and can be saviours, their barks can signify love, their tails can mean they have deemed you as their best friends, their eyes carry some much emotions that it’s impossible not to give them a nice head rub.

Dogs, like many of our pets, mean a lot to us.

The problem here is, in certain countries, dogs are less privileged and unfortunately do not get the right treatment to nurture their loving nature. Just like kids, dogs soak up their surroundings and if they’re being treated badly, not trained to adapt to a leash, punished for things outside of their control, well that will make for very angry and dangerous dogs.

When I was growing up in Nigeria, a lot of my friends had dogs. I remember going to their houses during the weekends being scared to death that I’d have to face their dangerous four-legged housemates. It might sadden you to know that majority of the time, these dogs weren’t meant for companionship but used as crime-stoppers. Because crime was very rampant and a very huge part of my experience in growing up, dogs were usually adopted, bought or given as a favour for security reasons and to deter criminals away. I lived in a middle-class area and while it was relatively safe in comparison to some areas, there were still many crimes being perpetuated. And majority of the time they were fatal armed robberies due to the lack of jobs for the youth and the very dire economic situation of the country at the time.

A day I would never forget

I was about 7, my sister was 5 when on a seemingly normal day we received uninvited visitors. I remember it was a Sunday and my mother was preparing food (Yam and eggs) on our verandah that will double as dinner and as school lunch for the next day. In what felt like 2 seconds, footsteps were coming up the stairs ordering us into our “Parlor” which in the western world is referred to as the living room. They asked my mum for money and proceeded to tell her they had killed two people earlier in “Texaco” a bridge about a mile away from us that housed a few less-privileged families underneath it. The robbers asked my mum for money, ordered us all to kneel on the ground and threatened to fire if we ever looked up at their faces.

In Nigeria, once armed robbers are caught and identified by their previous victims, it’s an automatic death sentence for the robbers. So no one dares to stare at robbers during what we used to refer to as “operations.” After about 5 minutes of threats and my mum constantly peeing on herself, with a gun to my head, I was ordered to lead the robbers to a room and provide them with our umbrellas as it was raining. I remember walking up to the room feeling surprisingly very calm. Normally I freak out to the simplest of things but for some reason on this day, I was very calm and my mind was empty. It was almost like I knew, intuitively that I still had a lot to do in life and it simply just wasn’t my time to die. My naive and young sister was the opposite and she was screaming at the top of her lungs, which in turn gave my mum serious anxiety as that could have angered the robbers for bringing attention to them.

Luckily for us, we were all spared. After inducing so much fear in us, and carting off with what converts to around £50, the robbers finally left, leaving us frozen and wondering when to scream for help for the fear that they might come back and kill us. We later found out that even if we had screamed, no one would have tried to help. As our neighbours who had been visited first, were locked in their wardrobes after being robbed. Safe to say my entire family was traumatised. We moved in with my grandmother into a house in a much poorer area called “face to face,” which is a term used for a bungalow with about 10 rooms, each housing different tenants. We spent about 1 year and a bit there and as poor as everyone was, I can say that time in my life was the happiest I have ever been, even till the point of writing this article.

When we were ready to move out into our own house again, the first and common advice given to us to prevent a recurrence— Get a dog! A dog will deter thieves from trying to rob you they said. A dog is the ultimate form of security, no one would dare come near your house if you have one or even a bunch. Now you might be looking at your dog at home right now, wondering how these sweet creatures could possibly be a match for a gun-wielding robber trying to kill you or get away with your money. But the truth is dogs used for this purpose were raised completely different to your dog.

These dogs are either trained or neglected enough that they are angry and will bark ferociously at you so much so that you wouldn’t dare go near them fearing for your life. They will seldom be on a leash because they are usually chained down to a verandah as a warning to anyone who dares to burgle a particular house. And so that’s why I said, if you happen to ever see a dog randomly strolling on the street, the dog has probably escaped, and you should most probably run, for the fear of being bitten, given rabies and eventually dying. And I did, for years as a kid. I would run as fast as my tiny legs could take me from what I thought were monsters out to kill me. That was until I met skuski.

My dear friend, Skuski

As described above, we were recommended getting a dog by friends and family. My mother who was initially scared of having a “dangerous” dog around her 2 kids, finally gave in, mostly because of the 5-star recommendations her friends gave. We adopted a Boerboel we later named Skuski. At first, I wouldn’t go near her and I was quite frankly, scared to death so much that I would avoid the entrance where she was chained every time I was on an errand without my mother’s supervision. At first, she would bark so loudly at the sight of me, and as a kid, I automatically interpreted that as a dog’s way of telling me she hated me and everyone that looked like me. Honestly, I wouldn’t blame her, she had had a very unfair and terrible life, and all she was trained to do was bark. But over time I started to realise that this creature has so many feelings. And as she started to get used to my family, she was much more calmer. She stopped barking loudly at us and would wag her tail every time my sister and I snuck out to feed her portions of our food my mum expected us to finish.

Little by little, we mustered the courage to give her head rubs. She would try to follow us to school every morning when my mum would allow her to stroll around the compound. She would run after us and it started to annoy my mum so much that she would scream at her and ask her to go back. I remember her running back with a very dejected and sad look on her face each time. But it was for her own safety, if she had followed us to school, she might get lost and eventually end up in the wrong hands being trained for despicable things. Another scenario is scared passerby’s throwing rocks or stones at her because of the fear of their own lives. Looking back at it now, that really breaks my heart. Because that was Skuski’s way of showing her affection to us. It was Skuski’s way of telling us she was going to miss us for the few hours we were at school. And I hadn’t ever seen a dog in that light before so it meant a lot to me.

The one incident I’d never forget, was when Skuski ventured outside the compound and innocently came back with a black bag which she probably thought was a treasure. But unfortunately, it was filled with faeces someone had dumped on the side of the road. That angered my uncle who was spending the weekend with us so much, and with lack of education on how to treat dogs, he wouldn’t let Skuski come back into the house the whole night, despite all of our pleas and her very heartbreaking barks. I still visit this day and being much older and wiser and seeing the way dogs are treated when I moved to the U.K., it really does haunt me. Skuski ended up spending around 3 years with us and she became our only playtime buddy and an excuse to go out of the house most evenings.

Skuski’s exit

When I was about 11, my mum noticed Skuski was getting thinner and thinner and had absolutely no idea what the problem was. Vets were not as accessible and so she thought the solution to the problem was a change in diet, but this didn’t help at all and she only got skinnier and skinnier. The last time I saw Skuski, was on a morning when we were going to school. She was on our landlord’s deck, standing there and staring at all of us. What haunts me about that morning is my mum had been planning to take her to our doctor who is not a trained vet, but who we had hoped would have connections to someone who could take a look at her. Unfortunately, when we came back, she was nowhere to be found. We searched and asked everyone on our street and the common consensus was she had simply gone somewhere because she knew she was going to die. It broke my heart so much that I begged my mum never to get another dog. I didn’t want a repeat and till now I can say I haven’t gotten over it.

When I moved to the U.K. about 4 years later, I still had an innate fear of dogs because to me Skuski was the only dog I had ever gotten to know and grown accustomed to. For a few years, walking in parks, I would get scared of dogs and owners would tell me, “don’t worry, she’s a gentle girl she wouldn’t bite.” But I couldn’t help but remember some of my primary school classmates who lost their lives to dog bites. So if you ever wondered what dogs from shelters went through sometimes before finally being adopted into an educated stable family with information on how to treat them, dogs like Skuski are very good examples of that. If you ever wondered how a woman on the news can be mauled to death by a dog, it’s not the dog's fault, it’s the humans who sometimes ignorant, raised these dogs in terrible unfavourable conditions. There are no bad dogs, just bad owners.

If there’s one thing I wish for the most, it's for Skuski to come back to me. Because now I have so much knowledge and so much information on how dogs should be treated. I know how to pamper her and how to allow her to follow me to places, safely, without the fear of her being kidnapped or hurt. I know she wouldn’t bite me and I understand the cause of her initial anxiety now. I know many vets I can take her to, at the first observation of her weight loss. If I saw her on the streets, I would run, but only towards her to give her a big hug and a kiss on the forehead. I miss Skuski so much, and if dogs somehow have multiple lifetimes, I hope one day when I’m ready to adopt a friend, she comes running back into my arms.