Ruminations of a meandering mind

For the past few days, the object of my scrutiny has been a black dog. The otherwise nondescript street animal has this fetish for two-wheelers. I first encountered the dog a month back when I was on my two-wheeler and the dog emerged out of nowhere and started running behind me. It took me a little long to register and the dog had gained on me pretty fast and was right beside me. I pressed on the accelerator at the right moment and raced away leaving it gasping behind me. I had not seen the animal before on that road and this act sure caught me by surprise. It reminded me so much of one short story by James Herriot who describes a delightful dog that would race his car from the one of the farms to the main road, every time he visited the farm to treat the animals there. Since I frequent this road pretty often, I became wary of the animal after that day and it’s become something of a hobby to observe it. I do not know its real intentions, maybe it is to race the vehicle or simply to get a nip at the rider, whatever it is I found it pretty strange. I notice the dog repeating the act for all the vehicles. It would start at a precise point and then run along for some distance, then on reaching the end of its territory run back and wait for its next victim. Since the road is devoid of heavy traffic, the vehicles would easily avoid the dog and I am not sure it has ever succeeded in its mission. However this does not deter it from tirelessly pursuing the goal. I even tried to get a look into its psyche, on a particular weekend I caught sight of the dog at its usual start position from the corner of the eye, and just as it raced behind me and started gaining on me I braked to halt at the side of the road. As I had guessed, it did not follow me further; it did not probably want to win because its victim had conceded so tamely. For it to savor success, it needed a fair and square victory.

Then as suddenly as it first appeared, I noticed the dog had disappeared one day. Many possibilities arise, it could have succeeded in what it achieved and strayed off somewhere else, or people could have complained and therefore it was taken away or another harrowing possibility was that it got run over by a vehicle. One things for sure, it was not the kind to accept defeat and no way would it have gone away thinking that its task was impossible. I am conscious of the animal each time I take that road and who knows it could be there somewhere, this hiatus could be a ruse to take the rider by surprise the next time it decides to spring onto the road and the ‘race track’.