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

Tuesday, July 20, 2010

Buddha

Here's the first of several cute new Club members - Buddha, commonly known as Buddy, owned by Nelson Gibbs and Connie Vassilev.

Nelson tells us about him:

My wife and I live in Hyderabad on top of a hill with few other buildings around, so the landscape is full of stray dogs.

Last December we heard something below us in the underbrush crying and crying. My wife went to investigate while I went to work.

When I got home she had rescued an orphaned pup.




We named him Buddy (and Buddha - hoping he'd be calmly serene), and started hand feeding him puppy formula. We think the mother may have moved the other pups and left him behind as we used to occasionally see his siblings and her nearby.

With the good food, regular feeding and veterinary care he grew rapidly.







I tried to find out what breed(s) he might be, and based on my experience with Basenjis (he has a very wrinkled forehead like a Basenji) I came across some information about the Pariah breed.



Based on my research, his morphology seems to indicate a significant amount of INDog genetic material - he has the curled fishhook tail, the short yellowish-rust coat, the long pointed snout, the wrinkled forehead, the square body measurements, and the inquisitive, feral personality (he is constantly stealing and eating things) typical of the Pariah breed. He likely has something else mixed in (the dropped ears aren't consistent with INDog), but I can't figure out what.

We plan to take him with us when we move back to the U.S.



Text and photos: Nelson Gibbs
Hyderabad

8 comments:

Sarah said...

What a wonderful story! Maybe because I'm Canadian and I see so many of them but ... he looks like he might have Golden Retriever in him too?

Rajashree Khalap said...

His ears are a wee bit like my Bandra's, aren't they? In fact when I saw the baby pic, my first thought was that's what Bandra must have looked like as a puppy.

Veera said...

It's also his eyes that make an impression of a retriever or some other gun dog. He doesn't have the almond shaped pariah eyes. But very sweet he is.

Rajashree Khalap said...

Yes specially in the pic of him in his bed, wearing a "good little dog" expression :-)

carazy. said...

what a gorgeous baby!

June said...

My Indog mongrel's ears popped up when he was approx 7 months old, so your dog's might too.
Though floppy ears go so well with frowning foreheads for maximum awwwww factor.

wandereress said...

He's adorable! I love the 'I am a good doggy' pose.

Anonymous said...

We have a dog that looks almost exactly like yours! He is half basenji and half unknown!