Throughout Cambodia I encountered an abundance of poverty, corruption and hardship but one of the most disturbing images I witnessed was an incident involving a dying dog and a callous human.
It happened at Otres Beach near Sihanoukville where I spent one of my last weeks in Cambodia.
Like much of Cambodia’s coastline Otres Beach is still relatively underdeveloped with just one long dirt road, a handful of guesthouses, a disproportionate number of beachside bars and numerous packs of stray dogs.
At my guesthouse lived a sick, malnourished and boney Alsatian, which would have been less than a year old. It was a lovely natured dog but like many K9s in Asia the neglect by its owners had left it lethargic and vulnerable.
Most of the time it would just lie around in the dirt, too exhausted to move. Every time I passed I would stop to give it a friendly pat while it gazed at me with its sad and tired eyes.
One afternoon, as I was walking back to my guesthouse down the muddy road, an SUV drove slowly by. I looked beyond the SUV and could see the Alsatian sleeping near the centre of the road directly in the vehicles path.
The SUV stopped just short of the dog and honked its horn. The dog lifted its head but didn’t have the energy to move so, without deviating, the SUV continued driving.
I watched as the SUV’s tyres slowly rolled over the dog’s rib cage as the poor animal folded in two, yelping in agony. Running over to the dog I shook my fist in rage at the SUV as it slowly drove off into the distance.
The dog’s internal organs had been crushed and I could see the pain and fear in its eyes as I tried to console it.
I ran into the guesthouse and told one of the boys their dog had been run over. I explained to them the dog was suffering and needed to be put down.
The boy said he could not make that decision as the dog belonged to the guesthouse owner who was not there. When the owner arrived 10 minutes later I explained to her that the dog needed to be put out of its misery. They said they did not know how to kill a dog and asked me to do it, an act I had not contemplated until that point.
I thought about the best way to do it: slitting its throat with a knife, dropping a rock on its head, choking it with my hands.
“No,” I thought, “I can’t kill this dog. We’re in Cambodia, a country where dog is a common meal for many. Surely there’s someone in this village who knows how to do it.”
All the while the dog was quietly whining as its breaths became shorter and less frequent. Fortunately, death was not far off and no one would have to commit the grisly act of killing this pet.
I watched the dog take its last breath before being picked up by its paws and taken to the garden where it was buried a few metres from my room.
For the next three nights I lay in bed thinking about that incident. I could not understand how the people in the SUV could have such disregard for an animal’s life.
I think this kind of reckless, self-interested mentality explains a lot about many of the problems facing Cambodia.
The SUV owners are usually the rich and powerful whose selfishness and egotism is a main driver in all that is wrong with this country.
They do as they please whether it’s the cruel act of running over someone’s dog or inhumane land evictions, which occur regularly throughout the country. They know their actions will largely go unchallenged.
The rich are a law unto themselves, living their lives inside a bubble of invincibility. I just hope that one day soon the lower classes will rise up and that bubble will burst.
- On a lighter note, below are some photos I took of fishing families in the quiet town of Kampot (home of famous Kampot pepper). It was early in the morning and the families had just come in to sell their catch after a long night of fishing.
Photo by John Anthony
Photo by John Anthony
Photo by John Anthony
Photo by John Anthony
Photo by John Anthony
Photo by John Anthony
Photo by John Anthony
Photo by John Anthony
Photo by John Anthony
Wow John that’s intense, so sorry you had to witness that. Angry.