Island Dog-Tails

Imagine you are a rescue dog, initially saved off the streets of Porto Rico, and recently immigrated from the United States to a small Greek island devoid of any motorised transportation. You have become accustomed to travel in cars and met many of your kind while on walks in the dog park. You know about cats, an annoying self entitled smaller four legged species, and of course your food dispensers and home providers, humans’ in all shapes and sizes.

Several jet-lagging hours in a loud cage surrounded by suitcases and paraphernalia later, your human frees you and introduces you to your new home. they call it Hydra.

So now you own an island, with no cars, all sorts of exciting new smells, sounds and walks; everything is good. Then on your second walk along the coast road to a place called Vlichos it happened. Your worst nightmare, Jurassic park stuff barreling straight down the narrow cliff side path toward you. Enormous head, huge ears, awful smell and utterly fearsome.

Trapped!!. Your only plan of action was to turn tail and retreat, hell for leather in the opposite direction. It took some hours and much coaxing out of a distant village to find and lure me back to the safety of my house. It was explained that I had better get used to these new beasts, they were called mules or donkeys, and whilst top of the food chain size wise, they were not carnivorous and had no plans to interfere with doggie territory. They kept to themselves and if you left them alone, would not kick you into next week.

It is a global phenomena but it’s particularly accentuated in Greece and even more so on Hydra our vehicles island which hasn’t got the hum of traffic to dull the pitch. Barking dogs, not just woof-woof, but the eternal non stop, day and night noise of a bored dog with nothing better to do but announce its presence from a restricted garden or tether.
Of course the owners are to blame, dogs can be taught not to bark incessantly but some locals refuse to believe that. One day when Toby our big dog started barking for no reason, I went out and inflicted the usual disciplinary process and whacked him on the bum with a sock.
My neighbour informed me that I was wrong and that it was natural for dogs to bark “it’s what they do”.
Not so, Toby never barked when we were at home, unless someone unknown, or an alien animal was invading his hill.
If on occasion we left him on the terrace we went out he would bark once, endlessly, at three second intervals. It took us a while to figure it out, whilst Toby was a very smart pooch, but he didn’t grasp the concept of an echo. So he ended up arguing with himself, “this is my land, no this is my land” replied the opposite side of our valley, and so on ad infinitum.
and so he talked himself out of freedom of the terrace when we vacated the house.

Irish Tony of Vlichos once took his rural island-dog, Socks, across to the mainland to pick up some building supplies. Socks did not know what a truck was but when it “ate” his master (Tony climbed into the front seat) he went absolutely bananas and attacked the front “leg” (tire) of the beast with a ferocity we didn’t know his gentle pooch possessed.

One Winter we were visiting our friend Pedro in Cape Cod, and took the dogs on a long beach walk one afternoon. Not a soul to be seen on the endless miles of sand, until the speck of a person way down the end appeared. Toby was still of sound sight and hearing in those days, immediately declared the entire waterfront his by yelling at the distant intruder. Toby also a rescue mutt from a pound in Virginia, had a nose for garbage. No amount of training could dissuade him from it, if one blinked he was into the trash. Years later Pedro returned to the island and when he came to Kamini he spotted just the bum of a dog protruding from a rubbish bag outside Zoe’s pension. “I would know that bum anywhere” Pedro said, “Hello Toby”.

One of the advantages of living in Kamini is because there are no cars it is safe to let our doggies run around the hill on occasion. They know their way around and generally come home within half an hour. One afternoon, Belle who was the more homely of the two, didn’t return. After a couple of hours we started to worry and went in search.
Now everyone in the valley, indeed most of the island, are acquainted with our pets and we asked the usual suspects if they had seen our smaller dog, ‘Oxi’, not a glimpse, most strange, so we expanded the search as far as Vlichos and Mandraki.
By the next day we were serious concerned and most puzzled, a dog doesn’t just vanish into thin air on the island. Then shortly after midday we got a phone call. Belle had been spotted in the company of a tourist, who was instructed to call us.
When I demanded to know why the woman had abducted pour dog for the night she said that the doggie had “looked lost” and taken her home. Did she not notice the bright red collar, the flea collar, the ID tag?
I mean if one found a child in the street “looking lost” did one just take it back to one’s house?
We were not amused to say the least.

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I found this old photo taken in the Bahia bar. My silly way of lightening the Chernobyl crisis. At the time fallout was threatening to radiate all of Eastern Europe.

I remember there was run on NoyNoy tinned milk (there was no fresh milk to be had on the island back then) at the supermarket because local prognosticators predicted there wouldn’t be any radiation free dairy for at least five thousand years. Speculation was rife because the only news coming out of the Soviet Union was not to be trusted. Rain was to be avoided.

REMS (measure of radiation fallout) not DRX (drachma) was the currency of the day. After the kitchen closed I offered a toasted sandwich of the day for late night munchies. How the world has changed….!

Happy to be back in Greece after my first trip to the States since 2016. On Thanksgiving my sister in-law asked me what made the biggest impression of change in the ‘real’ world since my last visit … post-Covid etc. !

Quite shocking I can say: seems the world is changing so rapidly that I felt a tad archaic. 😂

My first ride in an Uber, for instance, was a semi-surreal mini adventure.

First Jennifer opens an app on her phone, follows a couple of clicks, and something amazing happened.

Ding ! An Uber is 9 minutes away.

She shows me a live satellite animated image of a little car crossing the bridge to St Simons Island, Georgia, with a route on a map highlighted to our front door.

Oh, says she, pointing to her phone, and this is what our driver, Sheila, looks like!!???

Does that mean the driver knows what you look like too??

Of course…. So she knows whom to look for, twit.

Then grabbing her coat, she says we should leave; Sheila will be here in a minute.

Okay, so I was starting to see the leap. Last time I hailed a cab in a strange place, it was a nightmare with city-savvy denizens masterful at leaping out of nowhere and snagging one’s anticipated ride. Standing on street corners, in the rain I recall, for ages. Such Uber magic was futuristic by comparison.

But it gets better: this became a full-on experience, more memorable than usual taxi rides.

Jennifer nudges me: sit in front. I open her back door and then open the front passenger for myself. This was an unexpected move, and laughing, Sheila apologized for the packets of shopping on the floor. Things she was getting at the store when she got our request, she explained.

The trip was a delightful story in itself, but the condensed version goes along the lines of, she has a sister who fell in love and married a Greek guy. Moved to rural Greece and loves it there. Sheila, one of eight siblings, wants to visit but is afraid to fly. Family history in 15 minutes, a bubbly chatty fun person.

Loved my ignorant questions about how Uber works. Photos are exchanged between driver and passenger to prevent other imitation Ubers ‘klepsy-ing’ fares. Stuff like that.

Next we pull up at our destination, everybody starts thanking everybody, and wife exits the car.

Αγάπη μου δεν έχω χρήματα.

It’s all done, she says. I look at Sheila, who laughs, “Yeah, go on, man, it’s all taken care of. Thanks. Happy Holidays y’all.”

J catches my look.

“It includes a tip,” preempting my next question.

But that wasn’t the end of my maiden Uber voyage.

We could rank her in stars, and she us, some sort of cyber reward system. ✴️✴️✴️✴️✴️

So dear Paige, in answer to your question, my first impression: The world is becoming one large app of convenience, used correctly, very positive.☘️💚

Associated Footnote: Back in the late 1980s we fought a fierce legal battle against a clan that wanted to introduce motorised transport to Hydra. Limited, they said.

We responded by saying one moped would be enough to ruin the Rock irreversibly in the wrong direction; it would loose it’s uniqueness. (Full story amongst other creative nonfiction in Rhubarb! if one needs an idea for a Christmas gift).

Well, it paid off. Untouched Hydra has become a crown jewel among Greek island destinations. Our Donkeys and Mules may cost more but they still can’t be beaten … even by an Uber.😂

Festive happy wotnots to all, and may 2023 bring peace, health and kindness. 🙏💚☘️🎄