BEYOND PUPPYDOM: INCIDENTS, ACCIDENTS, EXPLORATIONS AND MAYHEM: RORY DYLAN STEPHEN TELLS IT LIKE IT IS: RORY DYLAN STEPHEN AIRLIFTED TO SWITZERLAND FOR MEDICAL CARE

RORY DYLAN STEPHEN AIRLIFTED TO SWITZERLAND FOR MEDICAL CARE

Bob, Fay and Raffles were very concerned with my uncharacteristic behaviour. Not eating well, apathetic and reluctant to go out on my usual multitude of walks. It was the crying in my sleep and refusal to chase tennis balls that sounded the alarm bells.

Bob is not a psychologist, but it smelt not like teen spirit but Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. I had undergone a kidnapping and was exposed to nefarious and murderous characters in foreign lands. I played along for strategic and safety reasons and it paid off as I was liberated safe and sound in Singapore. A small puppy in an oversized and sleazy Southeast Asian world.

Bob, Fay and Raffles transported to me via a leased executive jet to Alstätten, Switzerland to the famed (and outrageously expensive) Kay Nine Clinic specializing in psychiatric (OMG) care for dogs. We first met with Dr. Moutro Skilos the well-known author of a series of veterinarian centric papers on PTSD for dogs.

After two days of intake sessions where my story was provided in great detail, mostly through my Singapore Times articles detailing my ordeal, a two-week intensive therapy session plan was developed.

Bob, Fay and Raffles found accommodation in a deluxe former shepherd’s hut in the mountains proximate to the clinic and were to pick me up in two weeks and return home.

Wouldn’t you know it! My roommate was Giak a Cambodian landmine sniffing mutt who had his rear left leg blown off by a landmine in Cambodia. Could have very well have been me!

RORY DYLAN STEPHEN’S BEYOND PUPPYDOM:WHY AM I FEELING THIS WAY?

WHY AM I FEELING THIS WAY?

I am back in Toronto with Bob and Fay. Raffles, my Singaporean Westie friend is with me on a permanent basis and I have been showing him around the neighbourhood. He is, or at least was, a working dog at the Raffles Singapore Hotel acting as a greeter and rat and mouse hunter in the kitchens of that esteemed hotel. Everyone loves him to death but he is a bit shy never having much more than a casual “greeting relationship” to guests at the hotel.

I should be feeling on top of the world being at home with Bob, Fay and my new friend Raffles.

I do not sleep well and I don’t think it is jet lag. I have recurring nightmares about my cage being kicked at the Hong Kong Airport by a nasty baggage handler. I heard his cruelty was captured on a security camera and he has been charged with cruelty to animals. Perhaps good for justice but for me?

And those threats to send me sniffing for land mines in Cambodia?

Being deprived of Bob and Fay my protectors?

The criminality I have witnessed such as the murders and explosions on the Eastern and Oriental Express, dog fighting, opium dens and money laundering. What could these occurrences have done to a Westie puppy?

I was caught up in the moment and it all was so exciting….at the time.

I ignored the horrific fact of my abduction and survived the best way I could realizing I was trapped and escape was impossible.

I admit it all seemed so fun and exciting. However one wrong move on my part and I could have been more than abducted. I could have been murdered.

Bob, Fay and Raffles decided I required some help after gagging on my kibble and crying in my sleep.

I used to enjoy my puppyhood here in Toronto but it has been stolen from me.

I am a big boy now and I need some help to get back on track.

RKS FILM: “10 Kilos”: Kinda Seen This Story Before

I couldn’t stop my brain cross referencing “10 Kilos” with “Midnight Express” but I will refrain from a comparative review other than remarking if you are in the poor narcotic inflicted gringo imprisoned in a Third World Prison type of mood you will not be disappointed.

“10 Kilos” is the “true” story of Sharon Yitzhaky an unsuspecting drug mule for Roni a man she met in Peru and travelled to La Paz, Bolivia with. Roni leaves Sharon (Daniella Kertesz) in their La Paz hotel room and hours later the Bolivian police bust in and arrest her for drug trafficking the 10 kilos of cocaine found in the hotel room.

She proclaims innocence during her slapped around interrogation and refuses to sign a prepackaged confession. An unnamed American (quite obviously a DEA agent) appears at the interrogation looking for a full confession so the United States can score a media victory although given the small amount of cocaine it wouldn’t be much of a victory.

Sharon is transported to Miraflores Prison controlled more by a gang than prison guards continually turning a blind eye to the contraband (including drugs) smuggling and acts of intra-prisoner brutality including murder.

The prison mother Amparo (Luna Mansour) welcomes Sharon with an “electrifying shower” and terrorizes and brutalizes and murders anyone opposing her rule or failing to pay their debts. The chief extortionist at Miraflores is Donna Maucha (Paola Tirado) who runs dollars and cocaine into Miraflores for Bolivian drug cartel leader Amadeo de Soto (Juan Pablo Olyslager) himself in the men’s section of the prison.

De Soto cuts a deal with Sharon; in court if she admits possession and does not mention Roni who has since been transferred to a Peruvian cocaine laboratory by de Soto until matters “cool down”. By agreeing to possession, a twenty-year sentence for trafficking will instead be a greased palm five years.

A sexual interest develops between Sharon and de Soto and she becomes chief extortionist and drug dealer at Miraflores replacing the departed Donna Maucha.

The golden rule of de Soto’s team at Miraflores is never snort the cocaine you are dealing to inmates and accept no sob stories begging for cocaine without payment up front. Sharon causes herself much harm by breaking this rule. Sharon has become quite a vicious thug as evidenced by her revenge shower administered to Amparo. Like the Turkish prison in “Midnight Express” Miraflores is more a village of criminals than a North American prison.

An expose of drug cartel money ruling justice in Bolivia and the slimy tactics of the United States Drug Enforcement Agency more concerned with media wins than actual drug cartel destruction.

As Billy in “Midnight Express” escaped back to his home in the USA Sharon also escapes to Israel.

A watchable film from start to finish perhaps even gripping at points. Well cast all round although Luna Mansour as Amparo is a bit over the top in her viciousness.

Watch the trailer here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dv2tIgsJ1ts

A limited USA theatre run begins 21August2026.

Directed by Doran Eran.

RKS Film Rating 73/100.

BEYOND PUPPYDOM: INCIDENTS, ACCIDENTS, EXPLORATIONS AND MAYHEM: RORY DYLAN STEPHEN TELLS IT LIKE IT IS: INTRODUCTION

INTRODUCTION

Let’s round off my period of puppydom at approximately twelve months.

When I commenced with “Lost in Puppydom” it was all cute, cuddly and good clean if not puerile fun.

Running around smelling and sniffing. Whimpering with curiosity. Being the cutest dog on the planet. Pooping and peeing here and there without a care of the consequences. Puppy fighting. That innocent tsunami of harmlessness. Ahhhh….so cute!

Some idyllic moments are not meant to be as on my first grooming I was kidnapped by Madame Fong in Toronto and smuggled through North Bergen New Jersey and Hong Kong with Singapore my final destination. Being transported in airplane cargo holds from Newark International Airport, via Hong Kong to Singapore is a sure way to obliterate puppydom or at least the syrupy version of most West Highland puppy stories.

My co-abductor, the late Bobby Fong Jr., was as time would tell a decent man and I was treated well. I played the waiting game and it worked out and I was “repatriated” to Toronto to my master Bob and mistress Fay.

I have had more adventure and intrigue than most Westies will ever experience. Dog fighting, opium dens, murder, unimaginable luxury, chewing gum smuggling, bribery, high politics, threats, international travel can mature a seemingly spacey puppy mighty quick.

Well readers I am back by popular demand and you readers are demanding more incidents, accidents, explorations and mayhem. Nothing like a story with a world savvy West Highland Terrier. A story for adults and one that you won’t want to read to your children or grandchildren.

RKS Literature: Washing of Brains by the World’s Head Laundry (Salman Rushdie)

Most of you won’t do it. The world’s head laundry is pretty good at washing brains. Don’t jump off that cliff don’t walk through that door don’t step into that waterfall don’t take that chance don’t step across that line don’t ruffle my sensibilities. I’m warning you now don’t make me mad you’re doing it you’re making me mad. You won’t have a chance you haven’t got a prayer you’re finished you’re history you’re less than nothing, you’re dead to me dead to your whole family your nation your race, everything you ought to love more than life and listen to like your master’s voice and follow blindly and bow down and worship and obey; you’re dead, you hear me, forget about it, you stupid bastard, I don’t even know your name.

Salman Rushdie, “The Ground Beneath Her Feet”, 1999

RKS Literature: Types of Rock n Roll Bands (Salman Rushdie)

There are bands that are hit machines, bands that earn the respect of the music crowds, bands that fill stadiums, bands that drip sex; transcendent bands and ephemeral boy bands and girl bands, gimmick bands and inept bands, beach and driving bands, summer and winter bands, bands to make love by and bands that make you memorize the words to every song they play. Most bands are awful, and if there are aliens from other galaxies monitoring our radio and tv waves, they’re probably being driven crazy by the din, And to the whole half-century-long history of rock music there is a small number of bands, a number so small you could count to it without running out of fingers, who steal into your heart and become a part of how you see the world, how you tell and understand the truth, even when you’re old and deaf and foolish.

Salman Rushdie, “The Ground Beneath Her Feet”, 1999

RKS Literature: India Only Discovers Sex in the Mid Twentieth Century! (Salman Rushdie)

And this in the far off 1950’s! In “underdeveloped” India, where boy-girl relations were so strictly controlled! True, true: but permit me to say “underdeveloped nation” or not, one of our prime cultural artifacts was a highly developed apparatus of hypocritical disapproval, not only of any incipient change in social mores, but also of our own historically proven and presently hyperactive erotic natures. What’s the Kama Sutra? A Disney comic? Who built the Khajuraho temples? The Japanese? And of course in the 1950’s there were no girl tarts in Kamathipura working eighteen hour days, and child marriages never took place, and the pursuit of the very young by lecherous old humberts-yes, we’d already heard of the new Nabokov shocker-was utterly unknown. To hear some people talk you’d conclude that sex hadn’t been discovered in India by the mid twentieth century, and the population explosion must have been made possible by some alternative method of fertilisation.

Salman Rushdie, “The Ground Beneath Her Feet”, 1999

RKS AMERICAN LITERATURE: Letter from Birmingham Jail (Martin Luther King Jr.)

My friends I must say to you that we have not made a single gain in civil rights without determined legal and nonviolent pressure. Lamentably, it is an historical fact that privileged groups seldom give up their privileges voluntarily. Individuals may see the moral light and voluntarily give up their unjust posture; but as Reinhold Niebuhr has reminded us, groups tend to be more immoral than individuals. We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed. Frankly, I have yet to engage in a direct-action campaign that was not ‘well timed’ in the view of those who have not suffered unduly from the disease of segregation. For years now I have heard the word ‘Wait!’. It rings in the ear of every Negro with piercing familiarity. This ‘Wait’ has almost always meant ‘Never’. We must come to see with one of our distinguished jurists that ‘justice delayed’ is justice denied.’

Martin Luther King Jr., “Letter from Birmingham Jail”, 1964.

RKS Literature: Celebrating Non-Belongers (Salman Rushdie)

But the truth leaks out in our dreams; alone in our beds (because we are all alone at night, even if we do not sleep by ourselves), we soar, we fly, we flee. And in the waking dreams our societies permit, in our myths, our arts, our songs, we celebrate the non-believers, the different ones, the outlaws, the freaks. What we forbid ourselves, we pay good money to watch, in a playhouse or movie theatre, or to read about between the secret covers of a book. Our libraries, our places of entertainment tell the truth. The tramp, the assassin, the rebel, the thief, the mutant, the outcast, the delinquent, the devil, the sinner, the traveller, the gangster, the runner, the mask; if we did not recognize them in our least fulfilled needs we would not invent them over and over again, in every place, in every language, in every time.

Salman Rushdie, “The Ground Beneath Her Feet”, 1999

RKS Literature: Outsideness (Salman Rushdie)

 For a long while I have believed-this is perhaps my version of Sir Darius Xerxes Cama’s belief in a fourth function of outsideness-that in every generation there are a few souls, call them lucky or cursed, who are simply born not belonging, who come into the world semi-detached, if you like, without strong affiliation to family or location or nation or race; that there may be millions, billions of such souls, as many non-belongers as belongers, perhaps; that, in sum, the phenomenon may be as “natural” a manifestation of human nature as its opposite, but one that has been mostly frustrated throughout human history, by lack of opportunity. And not only that: for those who value stability, who fear transience, uncertainty, change, have erected a powerful system of stigmas and taboos against rootlessness, that disruptive, anti-social force, so that we mostly conform, we pretend to be motivated by loyalties and solidarities we do not really feel, we hide our secret identifies beneath the false skins of those identities which bear the belonger’s seal of approval.

Salman Rushdie, “The Ground Beneath Her Feet”, 1999