Two Plus Two Equals Chaos!

Of course one mustn’t compare, but… Pups are so much like children. Only, so much easier. They only need to be fed and walked. You don’t have to teach them how to eat by themselves without spilling the food and making a mess of themselves; they are generally tidy creatures who will lick up crumbs from the floor and groom themselves later. (They are also quite helpful in cleaning up spills of an edible nature.) Plus, you don’t have to teach them to speak, read and write, add and subtract, paint, ride a cycle…

Best of all, they will not ever ask you to explain – among other awkward things – why there are 346 photos of one and only 343 of the other in the first few months of their lives with you.

So much for differences. There are some similarities, as well. The pups, in their first few days with us, have been almost as passive as the girls were. The girls have certainly grown out of it, so I’m hoping it’s just a part of the adoption trauma, the uprooting and the unfamiliarity of a new place, a new family. That must be terribly upsetting, even for dogs. Like the twins, one of the pups, Sandy, has a bad tummy (diarrhoea), which could also be due partly or entirely to the change in place and diet. Sandy (like Mrini, who had scabies) also has a skin condition for which the vet has prescribed a course of antibiotics, in addition to a cream and an unhealthy dose of anti-mite spray.

Unlike the twins, who gobbled everything in those early days with us, Mishti is a fussy eater. Even when she’s terribly hungry, if her food doesn’t have a good dose of non-veg in it, she’ll turn her nose up at it in a most supercilious manner. If there is a sufficient quantity of non-veg, she’ll dig her nose into it with determination and snarl at Sandy. They have separate bowls, but they insist on both eating from one and then from the other; I suppose each wants to be sure that the other isn’t getting something more delicious.

Mishti is slowly getting to grips with the concept of being put on a leash and taken for a walk. At least she now does 90% of the walk on her own steam, without being dragged along. She hasn’t yet thought of doing her business while out on a walk, but I suppose she’ll hit upon the idea some day. The last few times, the twins have wanted to join in on the walk-the-dog sessions, and have even taken hold of the leash. Something good should come of this, sometime soon. But Sandy, whom I’ve taken out only a couple of times, is still completely averse to the idea. I’m hoping that once Mishti “gets” it, I can add Sandy to the soup and he’ll pick it up from her.

My memories of my dog days (to misuse the phrase) are full of easy and happy times. As a teenager, I played with the dogs, groomed them, walked them, fed them, scolded them when required, slept with them (something Amit has always been a teeny bit jealous of!)… we were pretty much siblings. With the twins and the pups, it’s not quite there yet. On Monday, when I had turned my back on the lot of them for a couple of ticks, I turned around to find that Sandy had cornered Tara on the floor and was licking her feet and Tara was wailing as loudly and hysterically as she possibly could. It would have been funny, if only the poor girl hadn’t been so totally petrified.

After that episode, it has taken several days for Tara to become even mildly less paranoid of the four-leggeds. The moment they make a move in her direction, she runs screaming and wailing and clutches on to me with all her might. Mrini is less terrorised. On one occasion when both dogs succeeded in backing her into a corner, she put both her hands out in front of her and pushed them away by the nose! I was so proud of her, because she is normally the scaredy cat of the two. Since then, she has made numerous friendly overtures including sitting by the dogs as they sleep, patting them, putting her face within licking distance, poking their eyes and so on. At least she’s getting the idea.

The more dog-friendly of my friends assure me that the kids and the pups will be best of friends – or at least best of siblings – very soon; that the pups will get used to going for walks and doing their business outdoors; that they will all grow up and settle down and I can stop living with all the bedroom doors closed (to keep the messes off the mattresses) and the living room in tatters (thanks to teething puppies) and Tara in tears… it will all come together into one big happy family, some day soon. That’s what they tell me.

Well, I hope they’re right. It can’t be soon enough for me.

So That’s Why They Say, “Be Careful What You Wish For”

After the first full day of having the pups at home, I have to admit, I feel rather as though I’ve been run over by a road roller. What was I thinking. They’re peeing and pooping all over the place and the only thing I’m doing all day apart from thinking up and managing ten separate meals (four for the pups in addition to three each for kids and adults) is cleaning up their messes. And stinky they are too! As if I haven’t just had my fill of that – it’s not that long ago that I was up to my elbows in the twins’ pee and poo.

On the other hand, if this is something you’ve got to do, you might as well do it and get it done with while you still remember how. And have the energy for – even if I’m not sure that I really do. I remember feeling equally dazed and road-rollered when the twins came home – and that was with the pee and poo all neatly tied up in diapers. So I know it’s going to get better.

Or at least, I think I know it will.

At any rate, I firmly believe it will.

Or… I somewhat believe it will.

Ok, I desperately hope it will.

It willl.

Won’t it?

Oh, for a garden with a screen door that the dogs can open from either side, like we had when I was a teenager and we had three dogs at home, and everything was so simple – or so it seems with the rose-tinted glasses of retrospect.

The first day, the dogs were both completely subdued. They ate, but they showed no signs of life apart from that. Until 2 a.m. – then they decided it was time to play. They came and pushed open our door and entered our room and walked on to our bed and demanded company, or at least an audience. We threw them out, so they complained for an hour. Then, they fell asleep – or I did, perhaps – only to awaken at 4.45 a.m. with similar requests. This time, I actually got up – and started my day by cleaning up about a half-dozen messes. Charming. However, the dogs did their best to entertain me by chewing my ankles and scraping my legs raw – they were in high spirits and didn’t even remotely resemble the limp, lifeless beings we had brought home some hours ago. Which was great, but… did they really have to wait till 4.45 on Sunday morning??

The rest of Sunday, they alternated between being sleepy or asleep, and being frisky. They played together most adorably in the afternoon, and when S, P and p came to visit in the evening, they were their social best, all wagging tails and huge grins. It was good to see them being more like what I imagined pups should be like. Even the stinking messes seemed a little more bearable when done by a happy, grinning, playful pup.

The twins are quite fascinated by them – when they wake up and come out, they don’t come to me or Amit any more, they just stop and stare at the pups. They’ve patted both pups, somewhat tentatively, though they haven’t tried really playing with them yet. At one point, Sandy went to poop in the bathroom and Tara came and told me all about it, so I could stop whatever I was doing and go clean up. Very nice, thank you Tara.

It took the pups exactly 24 hours to discover the living room, and exactly 24 hours and one minute to pee on the mattress that serves as a divan. In the next few minutes, they also similarly honoured the carpet. Within a few short minutes, our living room was rendered completely devoid of any scrap of fabric other than what was hanging from the curtain rods and stitched to the sofa and armchair. Surely, they will mark those bits of furniture soon enough, but there’s nowhere we can move them to. Besides, we have to have some place to sit.

The only real problem so far has been walking them. They’re terrified of their leashes and of being led around by them. Perhaps they’ve seen too many painful things happening to dogs who get taken away in the Shelter. Anyway, we took them out on Saturday evening, and Mishti managed to wriggle out of her collar, which must have been too loose. I hadn’t worried too much, because I’d thought she’d just stop where she was, if she managed to get free – she seemed so meek and mild. But she streaked off like greased lightening and hid under a car. Sup33 had come to say hi, along with her mother and her daughter, and with Amit and the twins and Sandy around, it was quite a large party that helped or watched as we struggled to coax or otherwise persuade Mishti to come out from under the car. We were still too new to her and she wasn’t inclined to trust us, so it took some doing. At one point, I almost thought we’d have to just leave her there, but that would have been too terrible. Finally, with Amit shooing from one end, and me at the other end making the disgusting kissing sounds one makes to animals when trying to persuade them to cooperate, we managed to get her. And we went straight home and haven’t ventured out since. Of course, we will have to sooner or later – I’m going to have to take dogs and girls out together sometime soon, but I really can’t say yet how that milestone is going to be achieved, much less when.

So life has become tremendously more complicated than it already was. Sigh.

And no, knowing that I asked for it doesn’t make it any easier.

Two New Additions To Our Family

As though the twins weren’t keeping us busy enough, we decided to add another two members to our busy household.

We had gone to meet V, V & v a while ago and the twins took to a giant teddy bear there. So one day last week Amit said he’d like to get a couple of dogs for the twins. He meant stuffed toys, but I thought he meant the real thing. And of this simple misunderstanding, was a crazy idea born. We both got carried away with the thought of real dogs, and set about working out how it could be done.

On Monday, Saturday seemed very far away, but however slowly, time rolled inexorably on, and at last Saturday was here.

It’s never easy leaving home with the kids, but it’s so much more difficult on a Saturday morning, when you’re feeling tired and short of sleep, impatient, eager, just a bit tense, and in a hurry to get somewhere. Despite everything, we managed to leave home by 11, and reached the animal shelter, CUPA, by noon.

Of course, we had had other dreams: a golden retriever, maybe even an Irish Setter. Maybe even a pair! But in the end I think we always knew we’d end up picking up a mongrel pup from somewhere.

I’d been to CUPA once before, four or five years ago. That time, I’d been captivated by one particular dog, whose sweet brown eyes followed me everywhere. I’d also been shocked to see many amputee dogs, hopping around quite happily on three legs. This time, I was prepared for the amputees, and hopeful that we both – or all four – would be similarly captivated. But we were shown a small collection of scraggly mongrel pups, with nothing much to distinguish one from the other. There was particularly frisky pup, a few months old – but he was apparently “boarding” there, not for adoption.

Amit wanted tiny pups, but the staff there encouraged us to go for the bigger pups, perhaps not entirely sure that the tiny ones would survive. The one Amit liked looked particularly weak, small, and lacklustre.

I had decided that on the whole females would be better, so we picked two girls, not from the same litter. One was small, hairy, snub-nosed, and flop-eared, light brown in colour. The other was larger and older (about three-and-a-half months, we were told); she had the face of an Alsatian, with a long, thin, pointy snout and sharp, pointy ears. She looked intelligent and eager. Her expression, more than her looks, reminded me of Cassie. She was terribly thin, but her coat was sleek and black.

The first pup, the smaller one, we were told, had a skin infection and they weren’t confident of curing it, so they asked us to pick another. We looked around, but there wasn’t much choice. Amit firmly wanted two, though – one for each girl, he said. So in the end we took that girl’s brother, apparently from the same litter, instead.

There was some paperwork, then inoculations and de-worming, which we had to pay for, and then we were done. Altogether, we spent about an hour and a half at CUPA, which was not too bad.

I would have held the pups in the car on the way home, but Amit voted to keep them in the back of the car. It was a long drive, perhaps their first, and at least one of them was sick on the way. But we were home by a little after 2, and now we were six.

Going Astray

For those of you who haven’t heard, a few days ago, a pack of stray dogs attacked and killed a small boy.

The dogs weren’t rabid – as far as is known – but were hanging around near a meatshop, which might account for their unduly aggressive behaviour.

This is the second such incident in a few months. The first was in a different area, and without the added provocation of a nearby meat shop.

The powers-that-be, in this case, BBMP (Bruhat Bangalore Mahanagara Palike) have reacted predictably, by launching a stray-dog-culling exercise. To this, the dogs have reacted, also predictably, by biting people – not necessarily limiting themselves to the BBMP stray-dog-catching people.

This bodes ill for the dogs.

As far as I can tell, there is currently no plan to “euthanize” (to put it politely) the dogs. The BBMP plans to put them in compounds, but they simply don’t have the space.

As a passionate dog lover – the type who snaps her fingers at a passing stray dog and immediately has a new friend – I wish there were some better solution to the problem. The sterilization drive that has been ongoing for some years now, is clearly not going to bring about a reduction in the stray dog population unless many more people and a lot more money is pumped into it. I don’t – in principle – agree with the sterilization plan either, but I do agree that it is more humane than simply rounding them up and injecting them with something lethal.

The fact is that we do need to do something about the strays. They breed like rabbits, and while I don’t go so far as to blame the existence of rabies or other diseases entirely on the stray dogs, it is true that rabid dogs are a serious menace. That apart, there is the traffic problem – the not infrequent, gruesome sight of dog remains on the road is a visible reminder that stray dogs don’t always thrive for long.

And when strays start attacking humans, whether merely biting or actually mauling and killing, I can’t find it in me to say that they should still be allowed to roam freely. I do feel that it is highly unusual and unlikely for strays to attack humans unprovoked – in the absence of rabies – but, if that is what they are doing, for whatever reason, then it obviously can’t be allowed to continue.

I don’t know what the best solution is. Killing them off is inhuman; sterilizing them will take a decade to show tangible results; putting them into compounds will not only require huge area and infrastructure, but will also probably lead to social and health problems in the compound. Dogs, though pack animals, aren’t used to living in packs of hundreds, and there certainly will be vicious fighting, and perhaps starvation, in-breeding, disease.

Clearly, whatever solution is implemented will take a substantial amount of time, money, human resources, skill, and patience. And, in whatever solution, ultimately the dogs are the losers. It’s sad… this is our attitude to dogs, man’s best friend.

It’s a Dog’s Life – Part 3 – Cassie

We got Cassie when I was in my early teens, and entirely at my insistence (we already had two). From the start, Cassie was My Dog. She was a mongrel, the youngest of an unexpected litter of the Dachshund pet of a friend of ours. She grew up to be rather squarer and taller than a Dachshund, with no sign of bow legs, and with triangular bat-ears which she eventually learnt to prick up, most un-Dachshund-like; but with the same characteristic colours on her face.

When she came to us, she was meek as a mouse, but in a very short time she became the little tiger of her new little kingdom. She adopted us with the fierce loyalty mongrels are known for – and woe be to anyone who tried to enter her kingdom or harm her people.

Cassie was as energetic and spirited as Steffi was regal and gracious. She loved to play and would often jump on Steffi and tug at her ears or nip her in a friendly way, to get Steffi to play with her. Steffi would eye these athletics with an indulgent air and eventually would roll over onto her back, and allow Cassie to jump all over her and do as she pleased. At last, if greatly riled, Steffi would lumber to her feet, displacing Cassie from wherever she happened to be at the time, and then the two of them would run around the house, jump on the beds, roll over each other and generally put on a show for who-ever happened to be watching, the way dogs always do.

Another game that Cassie loved was tug-of-war. For years, we would present her with some scraps of rag, usually with a substantial knot tied somewhere in the middle. These she would joyfully grab and toss around and shake most viciously like an errant rat. If she could get either Steffi or one of us to grab the other end, she would be overjoyed and would play tug-of-war till the rag was in shreds. Needless to say, none of the rags lasted very long.

Cassie was unlike Steffi in almost every possible way. She was intelligent and could only be trained to do those activities that made sense to her. She could let herself in and out the door to the garden without pausing for thought. She knew how to use her nose to nudge the door open towards herself when she wanted to let herself in. She was even smart enough to figure out what to do if the door were so slightly ajar that she could not get her nose into the crack. She would stand up on her hind legs, balance one front leg on the door frame and use the other front leg to push the door shut, upon which, it promptly rebounded, not sharply, but enough to allow her to push it aside with her nose and scamper inside. But she could not be trained to do meaningless things like shake hands!

Cassie loved to be outdoors and free. On more than one occasion, she got off her leash when she was being walked, and then she would take off at lightning speed, for a sprint around the block. She would chase down and bite humans and animals alike, and wasn’t afraid to get into scraps with larger canines for no reason at all. She would return from these escapades muddy, and missing a few hairs, but thrilled to bits with herself.

And it was on one such bid for freedom, when she was still very young, that Cassie got into an accident. She wasn’t badly hurt, but she lost a large part of the skin off her stomach. The wound healed eventually, but she grew blond hair on that part of her stomach, instead of black, and it never looked quite the same again. On another occasion, she got into a tangle with a barbed wire fence and almost had the tip of her tail torn off.

Cassie hated the rain and would not go out at all if it was raining. But on afternoons when it wasn’t raining (which was most of the time), Cassie would make it clear that it was someone’s duty to take her out and play ball with her. She loved that. She would sprint after the ball, leap with all four feet off the ground, catch it in mid air, prance around with it joyfully, then bring it back and drop it at our feet, waiting for us to pick it up and throw it again.

Steffi loved to play ball too, but her idea of playing ball was very different. She would lollop after the ball at a comfortable pace, her over-long ears flapping around her face. Then she would pick up that small tennis ball in her huge jaws and almost swallow it whole, her flabby jaws closing up so that you could hardly tell that she had a ball in her mouth. Then she would stand there and wait for someone to come to her and take the ball from her. It wasn’t easy getting the ball out of her. It usually took a combination of dire threats, pleas, and plain brute force.

Cassie was also different from Steffi in her approach to food. She was quite finicky about food, and had to be cajoled to eat at mealtimes. She was usually healthy, but when she was still quite young, she suddenly developed kidney stones. We had her operated upon at once, and it was a long, slow, agnoising wait for her to recover, but recover she did, and fully. After that, for the rest of her life, she was on medication, four weeks off, two weeks on.

Cassie was probably the most voluble of our three dogs. Not only did she bark at birds, cats, and strangers, she also howled when we all went out, and practically tore the roof down when we returned. She would directly jump on the bed and shriek hysterically, expressing her joy and demanding to be patted by every one of us before returning to a state of relative calm and quiet.

The years passed, and Cassie, unbelievable as it had always seemed, grew old. Her kingdom was overrun by cats. Her bat-ears flopped and would not stand up. Her sight dimmed and she once went so far as to bark furiously at me, mistaking me for a stranger. She developed a lump on her abdomen, which slowly grew bigger and bigger, till it was almost as big as a tennis ball, and it looked like it would burst any day. I had left home by then, when my family called me and told me it was time.

That was five years ago, but even now, whenever I see a dog with Dachshund markings on its face, regardless of size, or gender, or character, or breed, I think of Cassie.

It’s a Dog’s Life – Part 2 – Steffie

It’s not easy to eat properly, if your ears keep falling in your plate. This is what usually happened to Steffi. And Steffi loved to eat. She would eat just about anything – specially raw vegetables. If you were shelling peas, she would eat the shells; cutting cauliflower and she would BEG for the stalk; scraping carrots, the scraps would disappear before your eyes. Apples and oranges she could gobble up whole, if only you would let her. And if you didn’t let her, she would stand there in front of you, hopping from paw to paw, drooling bucket-fuls of saliva, her large, liquid eyes fixed imploringly on you, till it became impossible to resist her mute but oh-so-eloquent appeal.

Steffi’s love for food often got her into trouble. She used to ransack the garbage can so often we had to ensure that we firmly barred the kitchen against her raids. And any food left unattended on the dining table was not safe, as we found out one day to our dismay.

We had been gifted a large turkey from a nearby turkey farm. My mother, in one of her rare fits of cooking-enthusiasm, had roasted it whole in our cavernous and ancient gas oven. We had invited some guests for dinner.

When the turkey was done, it was carefully placed in the centre of the large and elaborately-laden dining table. This done, we all retired to dress for the guests. When we emerged, a few minutes later, what a sight met our eyes. Steffi had managed to nudge one of the chairs away from the table; she had clambered up on to it, stretched her upper body across the dining table, and in this ungainly posture was tucking in to the turkey greedily.

She was stupid enough not to run, when she was caught red-handed, but to stay there with a guilty-as-hell look on her face and an expression that said louder than words: “But it’s so delicious! How can you blame me?”

Using her brains was not something Steffi loved to do. Being eager to please, she was easy to train so, having nothing better to do, I trained her to shake hands with her left paw and with her right paw, and to clamber up and put both front paws in my lap. In these mundane activities, she would readily oblige. But, except when it came to obtaining food, on her own initiative she would not use her brains for such things as, for example, opening the swinging screen door to get outside to the garden, or to get back indoors. Instead, she would stand in front of the door wearing a doleful expression and wait for someone to open it for her. Sometimes, she would go so far as to scratch its frame with one long claw, but that was the sum and substance of her efforts.

Steffi was famous for her hunting skills. In those days, there were plenty of rats in the neighbourhood, and every so often, one of them would get into the house. Blackie, who was partially blind by then (but had been a reasonably good ratter in his younger days), would nevertheless run around sniffing furiously. Cassie, sharp and quick as an arrow, would get on the trail right away. She would follow the rat under furniture and behind curtains, until she finally had it cornered. Then she would wait for it to make a run, and, more often than not, she would kill it joyfully. Then she would come and lay it at our feet proudly and wait for us to praise her and admire her kill.

During all this, Steffi would be running excitedly behind Blackie, or behind Cassie, or behind one of the humans. She knew she was supposed to run and look excited and she even sort of guessed that this might be a game of some kind, maybe involving a rat or maybe not. But she was never very sure which direction she should run in. So she tried her best by running in all directions. Still, since she wasn’t altogether sure what she was supposed to be looking for, she made sure that she was never in the way when it was found.

In the rainy season, Steffi discovered that there was such a thing as frogs. What’s more, she found that frogs were actually quite harmless. She would find one sitting on the ground outside the house some day and would go and stand near it, looking at it, and getting a thrill out of it looking back at her. When it at last tried to hop away, she would put out a big hairy paw and pull it back. The frogs didn’t seem to mind this, but when they tried to hop away again, a while later she would stop them again. After a while of this game, the frog would change tactics and hop towards her. With a startled squawk Steffi would hurriedly jumped away from it. The frog would then give her a sneering look and lumber away, knowing it had finally got the better of her.

Steffi liked the rain. She would go out and stand in the rain in a rather goofy, surprised way, as though to say, “Hey, what’s this, it’s all wet!” Then she would romp around in the mud and get caked with dirt and come back looking thoroughly pleased with herself.

The other game that Steffi liked to play was with her water bowl. She would amble over to her water bowl, drink a little water, look at it carefully, then deliberately put one big hairy paw on the side of the bowl, so that the bowl tipped over and all the water spilt on the floor. This accomplished, she would then gleefully slide the upside-down bowl into the living room, where she would push it under the edge of the carpet. Once it was well covered by the carpet, she would scrabble at the carpet furiously with her front paws, trying to get it out again and ruining the carpet in the process. Then, tired, she would go off to the bathroom and drink water out of a bucket.

Being a pure-bred (she was officially christened Stefanie Louise) Steffi used to fall sick quite often. For one who loved her food, it was agonizing to see her sniffing at it disinterestedly and wandering away. And sadly, that was how it was at the end. She went off her food again, but that time she never recovered. In front of our eyes, she wasted away, touching neither food nor water despite our best efforts. The vet called it a kidney failure and at last we had to put her out of her misery.

It’s a Dog’s Life – Part 1 – Blackie

In my growing up years, at my parents’ house we had, over quite a long period of time, three dogs. These were (in order of appearance) Blackie, Steffi, and Cassie.

Blackie was for a long time thought to be a Tibetan Terrier, but after many years of thinking him so, we decided (for reasons unknown) that he was not a Tibetan Terrier but a Tibetan Spaniel. Whatever the truth may have been (and it probably lay somewhere in-between) the fact remains that he was small, hairy, black, and of a notoriously unpredictable temper.

In this last respect (and in some of the others) he differed sharply from the other two dogs. Steffi, a very large Cocker Spaniel, was almost always sweet-natured – except for the time she bit me and left a permanent scar in one finger, which is another story.

And Cassie, a part-Dachshund mongrel, was fiercely loyal and highly excitable; which is to say that she would bite anybody and everybody except immediate family members.

Blackie entered our lives when I was about 3 or 4 years old, and stayed with us till I was about 18. Over the years, I grew expert at judging when he was about to snap at me, and I would grab him firmly by the scruff of his hairy neck to prevent him from doing so. This alarming tendency of his to snap at the nearest passing object usually subsided as quickly as it arose, so it was usually safe to let go of him after a few seconds. On one occasion, though, he got the better of me, because he got a good, firm grip of my other hand, which was dangling negligently and enticingly in front of his face and I almost lifted him off his feet by this means, before persuading him to let go of me.

Most of the time, he was not so irascible. He would come running to greet us when we got home, and would wind himself around our feet just like a cat. If someone were sitting on a high chair and he wanted to get into their lap, he would put his feet up and demand to be picked up (which was sometimes a risky operation). And at meal times, he would beg atrociously – but adorably.

Blackie was on the whole a healthy dog – apart from chewing grass and throwing up every so often, he rarely fell sick. He got cataract on both eyes, eventually, and was as good as blind for many years, but even though we shifted house after this, he managed to find his way around the new house, by bumping into various pieces of furniture and sometimes growling at them.

Blackie was our only dog for many, many years, before Steffi arrived and usurped his place of pride in the family. He had always been highly antagonistic to other living creatures, specially dogs, so we were a little anxious about his reaction to the new puppy. He wandered around her in an extremely puzzled fashion for several days, then retired to consider the matter. I don’t recall that he ever attacked her, though he never grew very fond of her. And he never lost the puzzled, slightly hurt expression that he acquired when this strange new addition to the family appeared and refused to go away.

It’s been close to 15 years since we laid Blackie to rest in the little patch of grass outside the gate of our house.