Of all my Marleys’ and me….

This blog was written after good buddy Rahul threatened to kill me and then stab me with toothpicks if i didn’t write. (The procrastinator in me took 8 months to realise the threat…. ) Thanks for pushing me to write dear ” Lord”.  

Man’s best friends do not come cheap anymore, however today I saw an ad of someone giving away free Rottweilers in Chennai. For a second i was tempted to pick  up one and hide it in my apartment. But rottweiler is not the kind that one would hide in an apartment…Then i thought of taking one back to my place in Bhubaneswar….. but then again  no matter how cute the rottweiler pups are, the grown ups are a scary lot……plus they bite a lot, so the plan was shelved for a while (I don’t want to go back to my home in Bhubaneswar in a few years from now and be chased away by the dog)

As a kid i had this habit of picking up any stray pup from the street and bringing it back home. Then the next few days would be spent in feeding the pup endlessly, till the puppy made an escape to save itself.  I would feed the puppy anything and everything i could lay my hands on. As a kid my understanding of dog food was limited and access to meat was sparse, so my pups have had the privilege of being fed chewing gum, raw papaya, cycle tubes, rotten tomatoes, chilli sauce, mustard seeds, newspaper articles etc etc. No wonder all my pups made a dash to save themselves. However that did not deter me from bringing back more puppies back home. This always left my mother in dismay and one time my mother threatened to leave house cause i had brought back an entire litter of puppies along with their family.

Amongst all the dogs who have had an impact on me the two i’m about to write on have been unbelievable. Blacky: My Tibetian mix breed and Benji: A name which i had forgotten only to be reminded yesterday by my better half.

Lets start with Blacky: The “God have mercy on us” dog

Blacky was only 7 days old when i brought him home clutching him in one hand as i balanced the cycle with the other. He was tiny …very tiny. Blacky was filling into Tiger’s spot, our German Shepherd who was a wonderful dog. Tiger had lived for more than 12 years and was an integral part of the family. Blacky had huge shoes to fill into….and he was pretty tiny to start off with. A few chews and escape bids later we reached home.

On reaching our place, i brought out a huge bowl of milk to make the little one feel at more at home. On seeing the huge bowl of milk, the overexcited little black ball toppled over and fell head first in the bowl of milk. Then it lapped up all the milk to save it self from drowning. Two minutes later he was content looking up at me, probing away if there was some more of the good stuff left………   From then till now, he is still the same naughty little fur ball that i had brought home. Little cause being a mixed tibetian breed, his height has stayed stuck at one and half feet above the ground level and naughty cause if i had not read “Marley and me” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marley_&_Me)then i wouldn’t have believed that there might be a dog in the world who is naughtier than Blacky is….

Playing catch with Blacky was always an event. Once you threw the ball at him,  he would go berserk. He would jump around the ball/over the ball/under the ball instead of catching it, but finally when one bent down to pick up the ball, he would get the cue, grab the ball and make a dash….. The ball would be stashed away in some place around the house where he hid his loot to be chewed upon later. 

Blacky always loves to chew upon things….. once he had bravely attempted to chew upon a huge bull mastiff’s front toes. What Blacky had taken to be a big funny joke was not looked upon kindly by the bull mastiff who had ended up chasing Blacky all around the locality before one of them could be brought under control and the other could be hid under the couch (no points for guessing who was hidden under the couch) 

Blacky also loves to see new people around him, he gets all excited and keeps hopping around till he is pampered by the guests.  One of our new neighbours came for a visit and she was one of those typical aunties who went ..”Oooooooohhhhhhhhhhh…..What a lovely dog !!!!!!!!”  She kept on doing this for twenty minutes and then decided to feed blacky some biscuits. Blacky intrigued by these strange new people who were giving him food after entertaining him for so long decided to return the favour ….As soon as aunty leaned to give him a batch of biscuits, Blacky jumped at her hair and started yanking it at full force.  What ensued was utter chaos…Aunty’s husband tried to pull her away from Blacky, which was looked upon as a challenge by Blacky, so he decided to get hold of some more hair..finally after the scuffle, I carried away a mighty pleased looking dog with a wad of hair clutched happily between his teeth. Its been three years and till date the lady has not come back to our place….they even shifted from their apartment.  I would like to believe that Blacky played no role in that event, however one can’t rule out the fact that Blacky watered her newly planted rose shrubs everyday till they wilted was one of the reasons for their hasty exit.

Then again he is the dear one who came running upto me and tried to pull away my bag when i was leaving home for 2 years. He yanked and yanked till i let go of the bag, once he had the bag he sat on it as if to try n hold me back from leaving.  My mom called me to say that Blacky had not been eating for 3 days after i left……… that made me sad but also made me feel happy in a way that my dog was missing me so much…..thought its a different story altogether that he ate up every little piece of food that was lying unaccounted in the house over the next two days.

He believes that he is a human being and i believe that he thinks he is the boss. Maybe he deserves a book written on him as Marley did.  He’ll be happy to chew on the same to show his appreciation.

 

Benji: The “no dog” dog

Me and a few of my old friends had this habit of roaming across any city for fun, so we were in New Delhi and after a hectic weekend of walking walking and more walking, we decided to walk around some more in New Delhi. Delhi has some pretty good animal societies and one such society is Friendicoes. They do a great job of rescuing old dogs and looking after them.

Friendicoes (http://friendicoes.org/) is tucked away under the defence colony flyover in New Delhi. This is one cozy corner for animals of all sorts. We were welcomed by a huge mutt who looked utterly disinterested in us. After staring at us for a few seconds he plopped his head back and went off to sleep.

Not disappointed at this show of utter disinterest, we started exploring the place without being aware of the fact that someone was following us.  On turning around we saw a three legged desi dog eyeing us curiously. Without even a second of warning, he jumped up on to us with all the affection he could muster up. Licking us away to glory. On being pampered a bit, he decided to show us around and became a guide who limped across to the other dogs, as if to introduce us to his friends. On finishing the introduction, he jumped on to us once again for his remaining share of pampering.

That was more than enough for us to fall in love with this great mutt. We bought him a packet of dog biscuits which he shared with as many of his friendicoes dog buddies he could manage to get (including the huge sleepy dog outside who looked like he was falling over every time he leaned down to eat)

Its been 8 years since we met “Benji” and Benji still remains the same. He still the same old lovable dog who prefers to share his food with others and jump on to us every time he greets us. Its been quite sometime since i saw him last. Hope he is doing well…. 

Dogs are wonderful teachers , as a “Hyper” Blacky or a “Serene” Benji would acknowledge….. Best buddies as some would say and of course many more things such as great teachers/counsellors/ agony uncles ……

P:S : One great blog which deserves a mention is this one here http://bkkstreetdogs.blogspot.com/ People keen enough to explore it won’t be disappointed i’m sure.

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