How did you come to eat a dog?
Eating my dog to survive - it wasn't a normal, everyday occurrence. This was not a dog from Hampshire where I came from. It was not a dog like a Golden Labrador. We're talking about a dog that I picked up crossing the Amazon Basin, up in the north, northeast Amazon. It was an Indian hunting dog, and I felt a bit sorry for it. Its feet were a bit infected, and I put some disinfectant on them, looked after it, and the dog sort of adopted me. And I had ideas that I'd build it up a little bit and I'd give it to someone. So the dog was a sort of passenger with me, and I got to know it. I found myself with some gold miners. It's a long and complicated story, and I still haven't gotten to the bottom of it. But these people didn't want me there. Had they found gold? I don't know. Maybe they were bank robbers. It's extraordinary, but the Amazon is full of bank robbers. It sounds so weird to say it. But if you think about it, if you rob a bank, it's a brilliant place to go. You set off into the middle of the Amazon with your fishing line and your bank proceeds, your cash, your dosh, and you just sort of hide in the forest, in the Amazon. You'd stay there for a year or two, just fishing. So that's what a lot of people do. Anyway, there were these people out there. They were gold miners, and they told me to go away. They had knives, and they kept on threatening me. I thought “I'm getting really uncomfortable here”, and I couldn't just leave. I had a big canoe and two guides with me. Anyway, one night I heard them say, let's go and slit his throat in Portuguese. I had no way of knowing whether they were just trying to scare me or not. But I just thought “I've got to make a run for this.” It just wasn't looking good, and I thought “I've just got to go”. I jumped into the canoe with the dog. I think the dog was in the canoe, actually. But anyway, off we went. The canoe capsized, and I found myself on the river bank down river quite a long way with nothing. There I was on the river bank. The dog had actually been washed away as well. Later on it came and found me, came up through the forest and found me. But I walked out of the forest. I walked and walked and walked, and I was getting weaker, and the dog was getting weaker. It just wasn't looking very good at all. I had a little primitive survival kit. But this was my first ever expedition. I was 22 when I set off, and I wasn't really very sure what I was doing at all in the forest. But days went by, weeks went by, malaria started kicking in. I just wasn't making any progress at all. I think it was only 65 miles to the outside world, but I just didn't seem to be able to do it. And I remember lying on the forest floor thinking, I've got to do something if I'm going to see my mom and dad again, because as I said, 22 is quite young. I felt it was too young to die anyway. And I just thought “I've got to do something.” And the dog was the only resource that I had. I thought “if I eat the dog, that will give me energy, and then I'll be able to get out of here”. I think it was the act. I've sort of gotten wound up about this over the years, and for years I didn't even talk about this. They've got it in newspapers, but I didn't really go through the details of it, and I wasn't able to reflect very well. I think it was the act of doing something so treacherous to a companion. This was a dog that I had sort of rescued, and I was killing it. It seemed very wrong. I don't know. It eroded my morale somehow, and it sort of tortured me that I had done it when I did do it. The actual details I don't remember very well. I think I have blanked them out. But, for years, it was very hard for me to come to terms with it, because I sort of felt I had done something wrong to my friend. And I was weighing out, should I have done it or not, and it's sort of common sense that you should try perhaps and get back for your mom and dad more than for a dog. But nonetheless, this dog had become my mate. We were doing this together, walking out through the forest. So I found it quite hard to look back at it in a way. Knowing I had done this thing, I was certainly very, very clear that it was my last chance. There was nothing more for me to call on. No other resource, and that it was now or never. So I walked and walked and walked, more determined than ever and stumbled into someone's back field, I suppose. It was a maize field, and I sort of stumbled through the field and collapse at a hut out there in the forest, on the edge of the forest. And this bloke took me in and looked after me for three days.
