There’s a lot of cow shit on the Camino in Galicia. The names on the stage maps are not towns but clusters of houses and adjacent barns. Most pilgrims do not walk to Finisterre and I relished in the desolation.
My first day out of Santiago I walked 55 kilometers on the rocky trails that rise and fall with the hills, through eucalyptus forests and pastures, past wealthy estates and crumbling homesteads, to the sound of tractors and the bellows of cows that echoed from barns. The weather shifted from hot sun to torrential rain half a dozen times and the air was ripe with spring and wet manure.
I had been by myself for the whole day and had not seen anyone for several hours when I came the four houses and the respective barns that make up Zas. It was mid afternoon and all the locals were either in the fields or in for siesta. I watched the cobble street for cow shit and loose rocks, so the black dog that raced towards me from one of the quiet houses caught me by surprise. I jumped back before I processed that the iron wrought gate that stood between us was closed. I let out a sigh of relief and a nervous laugh and turned back up the street.
That was when a german shepard turned the corner not more than ten feet from where I stood. We surpised each other. It came up to my hip and must have weighed hundred-plus pounds. The street was only two meters wide and stone walls rose up on both sides and the black dog still barked on my right side. I dropped my eyes and turned my shoulders away from the shepard, hoping that it would pick up on my body language as I walked past it. I made it forty feet down the street before Iooked over my shoulder. The shepard had not moved and was staring me down and the second I looked back it barked and then bolted towards me.
I would have kicked most dogs squarely in the nose if they ran at me barking like that. I am a 160 pound primate and I am confident I could win a fight with most dogs without sustaining life threatening injuries. This dog would have killed me. I turned my back on it again and tried to look as disinterested as I could. It followed so close on my heels that I could feel the heat of its breath on my thigh bellow my shorts as it barked. I thought about how it would feel to have a canine rip out my hamstring, or tear away a snout-sized chunk of my throat. I flinched everytime it barked.
I do not know how far it followed me for, I opted to not look over my shoulder again. I did pick up a large stick in the next patch of forest I walked though, and I moved my knife into my front pocket.