The day, when Cujo brewed hell for me, his owner

For those of you who thought that it was a swanky idea to scare yourselves to near-death with horror movies and novels, Stephen King’s novel Cujo, and finally a movie, took the biscuit.

It relates to me after horror, this time not on the screen or in a novel, but almost sent me to an early grave with fear of dying of rabies disease and barking like a dog before dying.

Cujo is the story of a friendly and easy-going St. Bernard (type of dog) who chases a wild rabbit and inserts his head into a cave, where a rabid bat bites him on the nose.

He goes bonkers with rabies and terrorises the entire town, ripping people’s bellies and throats. For the love of dogs, as a boy growing up on the shores of Lake Victoria, I was crazy about anything doggy, some were so skinny, looking as if they were suffering Kwashiorkor or have landed straight from hell.

They bore names like Simba, Killer, Chui, and Cheetah because, deep inside a boy’s head, he would like his dog to become one of those dreaded animals.

That means that my love for canines did not start yesterday. But here is how Cujo came into my life.

My spoilt daughter Jenny, who likes to see herself as a budding vet, bringing home weird animals, including salamanders and mono-eyed cats, to the chagrin of her mother this time around, brought in a really handsome, hairy puppy. I named him Cujo after Stephen King’s horror dog named Cujo.

It is not that I desired to become so ferocious like the Cujo of the novel.

Years went by, and Cujo became a common sight in my compound.

Trouble started when he started roaming the entire Uswaz, looking for “girlfriends” from whom he might have picked up rabies virus. His behaviour changed, and he became hostile and a real threat.  I was torn between poisoning him or calling someone with a machine gun to bore bullet holes on him thus sending him to the dogs’ heaven, if there is any.

He was raving mad, gnashing and barring his dangerous fangs, determined to maul and shred anybody who came within his range.

Indeed, there was a day when everyone had to stay locked up for the fear of being “eaten” up by Cujo.

The day things went terribly wrong was when Cujo reached the apogee of madness. As I was going out, he jumped at me, eyes glaring red, snarling, and ready to fight.  He grabbed at the nearest pair of sleepers and did what one does to chew gum. He chewed them to shreds. He lunged at me and sank his teeth into my bare foot. That is when I decided that he had to die somehow.

I grabbed a metal bar and smashed his head as hard as I could. As he lay there, I could feel a sense of relief because, had he done that to a neighbour’s child, I would have ended up in jail. The next thing I did was wash the wound with kerosene and seek treatment at Mnazi Mmoja Hospital.