Pawsome Creatures

The other day my grandchildren sent me a whatsapp (what else) video wherein they were playing with their neighbour’s tiny cute little bundle of a Shih Tzu pup. They were frustrating him by not giving the ball to him. I got wild. Game should be played with equal chances and when it comes to pups they should always win. Every dog should have his day. And then Dr Divya, a top notch gynaecologist of Hyderabad sent me a picture of the shining head of her Daschund pup, his tongue licking her palm. He will grow to be a long dog for sure.

My thoughts bundled backwards over the years.

Once in the early 80s I happened to lay my hands on a book titled “The Man Who Spoke Dog” in a library. I borrowed it and am not ashamed to say that I didn’t return it for I knew when I saw a treasure. I happily paid the due fine. But as it happens I lent the book to someone to whom I could not recollect later and so lost possession. I broke the axiom, “never lend a book”. Also the philosophy of losing what is not yours also struck.

The gist of the book is that there was this man minding his own business with a few dogs of different breeds and different sizes. One day as he was reading the news paper with the dogs all around him, he thought he heard the smallest and youngest of the dogs telling him that he wanted to go outside for a walk and asking him to stop reading. Surprised he looked at the dog and ignored it as his imagination. Then he heard again. Then it became a cacophony with all other dogs bow wowing the same thing. He was taken aback with the realisation that the dogs were actually speaking to him and that he could clearly hear them. He spoke back to them in his mind, consoling and took them all out for the walk. It was not long before he met a psychiatrist as he was sure he was dog-gone mad. The psychiatrist suggested wisely, to use this ability. “Go to the vet and help him” he said. He did just that. 

To cut a long story short, he was able to communicate with all the sick dogs that were brought there, find out what their problems were and reported to the vet for further treatment. The biggest success for him as per the book was about a dog whose problem the vet could not diagnose at all and when our protagonist asked the dog, the dog clearly pointed out the exact spot in his head where he had a pain, all in the silent canine non-verbal paw-er-ful language. The vet took an X-ray, located a brain tumour and the dog was saved.

After some months, like all good things he gradually lost this ability and became a normal man like you and me, if we are normal that is by any psychiatric definition, which I doubt.

I have a family of us two ours two. At one point we got ourselves a boy pup, a total black ball of Spitz cross and next year a girl pup an all off-white bundle of Apso cross. They became paw and maw and gave us litter after litter, a total of twenty eight. We distributed twenty six of their progeny in Agra, Delhi and Jaipur and kept two for ourselves. Having thus established my credentials, perhaps I can proceed with woff-woofing about the canine variety.

Both my wife and I in our mutually exclusive lives had dogs in our respective houses. Later when our lives became mutually inclusive it was imperative that dogs become a part. Before we could find our bearings, wife got onto the family way staying in a rented house in Pimpri. So a dog was not exactly on top of our minds. But there was this mangy dog almost dying near the house. Anybody would have shooed that dog away. But not my wife. She fed him two full meals a day and slowly he improved and soon became a healthy good looking smart dog, by sheer food without any veterinarian’s intervention or medication.

He took to guarding our house by parking himself at the front door and barking on sighting me. To his credit he never tried to enter inside. He took to his guarding duty, which comes naturally to dogs, so seriously that he would growl at me when I came in from my classes in my uniform. At times he excused himself from growling but looked at me with disdain! I think he accepted me only because I was the partner of his mistress and she didn’t seem to mind my presence. Neither my spouse nor I played with him as such though we used to talk to him in human language, basically enquiring about his health. Ultimately we got our own quarters and shifted. Though we felt a bit sad for him, we knew he was healthy enough to fend for himself. Mark Twain had said “If you feed a starving dog and make him prosperous he will never bite you. That is the principal difference between a dog and a man”.

Once long ago I read in the quotable quotes of Readers’ Digest, much before the Indian version came up, that the biggest psychiatrist in the world is a pup licking your face. It is so true! All your negative emotions vanish. There are some who don’t like dogs but prefer cats instead. As a matter of fact nothing wrong in any pet, animal or bird, as long as you treat it as a pet. The difference is that a dog always looks up to you and is eager to be of some service, whereas the cat will tell you to put it down in writing and he will look into it at his own convenience. Listen to Churchill. “All dogs look up to you, cats look down at you and only pigs look at you as equals”.

A Dog can lift up just as his tail, your spirits by his admiration. Is it not a proof of your greatness? Your dog is the only one in front of whom you can make an ass of yourself. You will only be loved more for it. Having a dog somehow makes you feel quite rich. Don’t confuse it with well-to-do. You must have seen dogs devoted to beggars. Who owns whom there I always wonder. Dogs love you more than they love themselves. We are their whole world. It is a challenge to be the kind of person who dogs think we are!

And now let’s say you are well-to-do and own a car. They love to stick their noses out of the window of your running car, while at home they get irritated if you blow on their faces. Why this contrary behaviour none has deciphered. And dogs love to go for a drive in the car. Wonder why. Maybe because they think you need their protection! My friend SKN used to fool his Robin, a Pom by placing him in his static car for a while. As long as he was inside, Robin thought that he was on a drive! It also always made me think as to why, the richer a British society lady (and those Indians who think they are) the smaller her dog. Have you noticed that paradox, an inverse proportion? The way they show off carrying them in their hands. It is said that money can buy a dog but not the wag of his tail. Talking of rich people, Elizabeth Taylor said that some of her best leading men have been dogs and horses. Poor Richard Burton!

My other half (I don’t subscribe to ‘better half’) always wanted a Lab, even though she was not an acclaimed science student. It is uncanny that we always had only small breeds. Once when an opportunity arose, we deputed our close friend Ramu to have a look at an available Lab pup, as they were located closer to each other. That was a cardinal error. He did look up and kept that adorable pup for himself telling me to go and find another one. You have such friends too when it comes to dogs! A house without a dog or a cat is the house of a scoundrel says a Portuguese proverb. But Ramu proved.....well, forget it.

If you have a dog, it is a must you talk to him, converse with him, regularly. My wife had a peculiar odd language she used with our ones. A kind of gibberish with grammar and gender in the dog house. I found it sweeter than baby talk. She used to tell them whole stories all made up and fictitious with all the drama and emotion with accompanying voice modulation but the raptness with which they sat and listened to the discourse and understood it wholesome was mind boggling. Their ears would perk up and twitch to the drama, their heads would cock this way and that and their eyes would widen and eyebrows would wave up and down. Normally it is believed that they follow body language, cues, tone and prosody. But I think they even follow the words, exactly. She had to tell them factual ones too as to where we were going when we dress to go out, tell them whenever we were expecting guests that too by their names and so on. And dare we go out without a proper briefing, we could rest assured, our bed sheets would be torn to shreds by the time we were back. I had to spend a fortune on bed sheets. One reason is their insecurity. They are worried about you not returning. Another is revenge. You didn’t take them with you, on which they insist. I kick myself for not noting that vocabulary down. Wifey would bark and snarl if any of us shared her towel or comb but she could kiss a pup on his face.

The other day my cousin Murali asked me whether dogs feel emotions as we humans feel. He was wondering about his playful Labrador, who wags to the soft call of Ziggy and barks to a loud call. The answer is an unwavering yes. They do have a canine language through which they express copiously. All we need to do is pay heed and learn. They too have a body language, different wags of tails (sometimes taking the whole bum along with the tail), sounds, looks etc. You must hear them sigh....man! The best part is they know your moods and state of health better than any lover or doctor. You must have noticed how they behave when someone is sick in the house. They can smell it, just as they can smell a dog-lover and a dog-hater. Some wise man has said that if a dog looks at you and walks away, you need to examine yourself. If only man could reach up to their level of intelligence! A dog is defined as an intelligent four footed one who walks around with a two footed idiot at the end of his leash. Thank God my son took our dogs on walks and not me.

I had bought a pair of Hush Puppy shoes from the manufacturers of it from Agra before the shoes bit the market. Somewhat illegal, but what the hell. I found the name as an oxymoron. Ever seen a puppy that is hush? I keep wondering whether a man’s friend is a book or a dog. If you want to be doing something all you have to do is scratch a dog. He will not only disallow you to stop, but will guide your hand to the places where he wants to be scratched, on and on. Scratching his tummy soothingly is better than meditation. He can really teach you a few things.

My olive green uniform was always embellished with dog’s hair, the Apso variety. Officers used to ask me “kya kutha rakha kya?”

Thanks fur reading.