The chirping dog

Can a dog chirp like a bird?

Yes it can, when it whines with its breathing passages filled with mucus. It sounds like a chirping canary. I think a dog near in the housing estate near my house is suffering from this condition.

Sometimes it barks like a normal dog. Sometimes it sounds like a bird. Sometimes it sounds like a broken saxaphone. It'll make these strange noises for hours from the compound of its owner's house.

Whenever I cycle past every day, I see it standing by the gate making these noises. I know something's not right. Could it be canine cancer or tuberculosis? Its owners, an elderly pair of husband-wife shopkeepers, are never home until midnight. Even when they are home, they completely ignore their dog's noises.

Once they went on holiday for a week, leaving the poor dog desperately chirping and barking away for hours until it fell silent, probably from exhaustion.

I once asked the people living next door to the house if the owners gave it any medicine or brought it to the animal doctor. They said no, and they had long given up asking the owners to take care of the dog. Over the years, all residents within earshot have complained to the owners but to no avail.

I do not know much but I believe our humanity can be measured by how we treat other living things, especially the ones we are supposed to love. It is at times like these when I feel ashamed to look in the mirror.

Why do we keep pets if we are incapable of providing them decent care? Or if we beat it with a stick day and night as some people do, or confine it in a wire cage so small it can't even stand properly for all its life?

The arrogance of taking a living breathing creature for our entertainment and thinking nothing of its needs.

And yet we sigh about why life treats us so unjustly.