Ryukyu Inu
By Michael Lynch
25 July 2008
Dog lovers have alot in common and outdoorsmen who love dogs tend to go for the hardy breeds. Could you imagine Grizzly Adams out walking a Teacup Poodle?
Generally when I head out with my 2 Husky/Mutts for a 5-6 hour walk in the morning I've got a few grand worth of camera gear hanging off my body and guzzled a quart of coffee so I'm awake enough to handle the exercise I'm about to recieve.
Ten minutes downhill, five if we run across a cat heading that way, is Red Beach, a great place to catch the sunrise and wildlife.
This particular morning I tied the dogs in the shade of a beach cabanna/Noodle Shop and fooled around with camera settings waiting for some activity. The tide must have been wrong; no fish jumping, no birds, not even any cool clouds to shoot. Almost 7:30 and I haven't shot anything yet! And the sun's getting up higher and robbing my shade.
Thinking about walking to a more remote beach, I decide I better have more coffee first. The coffee machine provides me some shade and an ice cold can of Georgia Coffee. That's when I saw them coming; The Okinawan Papasan and his 3 dogs.
We've seen each other before many times, me with a camera and 2 dogs, he with a fishing pole and his dogs, always at a distance. We always wave and go separate ways. His dogs are always with him, mine always with me. We've never spoken to each other before.
As I see him heading towards me, I hold up the Pentax with 18-250mm lens on and point at the camera and give the international OK (to shoot?) sign. He was a good 300 yards out and gave me the OK while he called his dogs and leashed them.
Dogs dont have the greatest long distance eyesight, but their other senses make up for it. Before the distance between us was narrowed down to 50 yards dogs of all breeds put their ears in the Alert Mode and that's about the time I decided to put the camera in Aperature Priority Mode.
Masanori, the Okinawan decided it was high-time these dogs met. All hell broke loose!
He had a male and female Ryukyu Inu and the third dog was a male. Mine are both males, never neutered, for reasons I can't disclose in this story.
Anyway, you can Google Ryukyu Inu or Siberian Husky and find out they are both territorial, which to me means: If a bitch is in heet and you're a male in my neighborhood, I have to kill you!
The growling, snarling, huffing&puffing-up started as soon as the dogs could see each other. You could probably hear the racket in Taiwan and I was thinking the Noodle Shop might fall down when Masanori's dogs landed him on his rump!
Me, I'd have cussed up a storm at the dogs. Him, in typical Okinawan fashion, he laughed and gained control of his dogs. Then, brought them closer to introduce them to each other.
With all on leashes and everyone but the female wanting to be Alpha male, Masanori tired pretty quickly and decided to let one dog at a time enter the ring. That's when I put the camera away.
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