Why the dogs of Jo'burg bark at night and step out to play during day

Chiwawa sunbathing by a pond. [iStockphoto]

I'm writing this overlooking the lawns of a large, beautiful garden in Bryanston, a wealthy suburb of Johannesburg. I'm not a wealthy resident, though I do feel healthier filling my lungs with clean air and serenaded by birds of air.

The young men of the house are similarly elated; their squalid subsistence, only days ago, when they had to deal with broken water geysers and sewers seem such ancient travails! They now spend their days like other uptown boys: they play with the landlord's dogs: a calm rottweiler named Pete and a Labrador named Parsley. They have been hurling a tennis ball in the air and which the poor dogs dutifully chase and deliver, only for the task to be re-enacted over again.