My grand daughter and other animals (Apologies to Gerald Durrell)

The baby sharing space in the dog basket is my grand daughter Taamara (meaning Lotus in Sanskrit and Malyalam). We have four dogs and a cat in our family. Two Bharath Hounds (as I prefer calling them!), one Beagle and one Jack Russell Terrier - the latter sharing footage with the baby!

One of the BHs is Patch, a big, rangy 14 year old black and white female, who we adopted after she returned to our house after "escaping" from an animal shelter hospital run by an NGO. At my request, Patch had been picked up by the shelter ambulance from outside our gate (she was then a street dog), and sent to their hospital, a good seven kms away, to be neutered. Within four days, Patch was back outside our gate, having jumped the fence of her enclosure and walked back to our house, smelling her way home through Bangalore's teeming roads! She was promptly "legally" adopted by us after her Incredible Journey - that was thirteen years ago. Ragamuffin, the honey and white-coloured BH in the photo, is two years old, and again adopted off the streets as a two-month old puppy. She is very sharp and alert and is our family's 24x7 Watchman. Nobody can get into our compound because of Muffin's alertness, and my children say that she has replaced Patch, who has now earned her retirement!

When the photograph was taken, Taamara was just eight months old. Being in a family of besotted animal lovers, Taamara was "thrown to our dogs" just as soon as she could sit unaided. All of them adore her, just as much as she does them. The honey & white Bharath Hound, Ragamuffin (Muffin, for short) is particularly enamoured of her. Taamara takes her tail and puts it into her mouth, and she gives the baby an indulgent lick in return.The dogs are the baby's "Black Cats," and fiercely protective of her if they accompany us on walks. Quite often Taamara is sitting on the floor eating a biscuit, with one or two of our dogs expectantly waiting for dropped crumbs. I have caught Muffin (a greedy glutton) actually, gently, stealing Taamara's biscuit, without any injury to the baby. Our family knows that the dogs will never harm the baby, and so we are all relaxed, even when she is crawling around the house with the dogs present.

We have decided that if we need to get another dog, we will only choose a Bharath Hound - there is no greater breed, for loyalty and love, than this.


Harini Kariappa
Bangalore