About Me

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Mumbai, India
I'm a landrace dog fancier. Founder of the INDog Project (www.indog.co.in) and the INDog Club. Before that, I worked with urban free-ranging dogs of Mumbai from 1993-2007. Also a spider enthusiast and amateur arachnologist.

This blog is for primitive dog enthusiasts. It is part of the INDog Project www.indog.co.in. Only INDogs (India's primitive indigenous village dogs) and INDog-mixes (Indies) are featured here. The two are NOT the same, do please read the text on the right to understand the difference. Our aim: to create awareness about the primitive landrace village dog of the Indian subcontinent. I sometimes feature other landrace breeds too. Also see padsociety.org

Thursday, April 22, 2010

Hero INDogs of Ahmedabad













These alert dogs prevented a burglary in the housing society they live in (Shakuntal Society, Usmanpara), in February this year.

Protecting territory from intruders is a largely unacknowledged service performed by street and building dogs across urban India. Ironically, these dogs were unpopular with the society residents prior to this incident. Dog-lover Meenal Shah had been told to stop feeding them. Their status changed once they displayed their true worth. Long live INDogs!


Click here for Lisa Warden's video about these dogs, posted earlier in this blog.

Click here to read the "watchdog database" I've been compiling, documenting cases in which Indian dogs (INDogs and Pariah-mix) have proved to be good guard dogs. If you know of similar incidents please email me!

And here I've copied the news report that appeared in Times of India, 20 February 2010:

Stray dogs scare away thieves
Vasundhara Vyas Mehta/TNN

‘Ahmedabad: Manjula Shah had a bad cold that woke her up at 4.40 am on Friday. This resident of Usmanpura got up to clear her throat and was annoyed by the stray dogs barking around the housing society.

Irked by the pack of dogs, Shah, 60, who lives on the first floor of Shakuntal Society peeped out of her room window. What she saw shocked her. An unidentified vehicle had come inside the society gate. The car took a round of the plot slowly, then stopped near a car close to the exit gate.

“Two men got off. They had torches and were looking around the place. Then they went close to the car nearest to them and started peeping inside. As they were about to break into the car, the stray dogs started barking. The hassled duo tried to turn them away, but the dogs kept barking. The two men panicked and decided to drive away,” said one of the neighbours.

“This is the dog family that society members have been trying to get rid of. They have even complained against feeding the dogs as they create a menace around here,” said Minal Shah, a businesswoman living in the society.

She added that she stopped feeding the dogs after encountering opposition from neighbours. “I used to do it discreetly. I am glad that people have realised the advantage of keeping them,” she said.’


Photos: Meenal Shah
Ahmedabad

2 comments:

-alf- said...

Gr8 u are doingso much for those sweeti pie i have one

Rajashree Khalap said...

Thanks! Wonderful to know you have an Indi. I visited your blog and it was nice to see you've put some of my blog posts there, but do remember it is copyright etiquette to mention the source of your text, info and photos. I do the same thing in my blog: for every post contributed by another person I mention the author/photographer's name :-)

Hope you'll email me pics of your dog and some details. I'd love to post them here. Thanks again for your nice comment!