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

Wednesday, April 4, 2012

Under the noonday sun

This is Kimaya on her mid-day walk in our building compound. Racing on beaches and in gardens and coconut plantations happens only on about eight days a month. The rest of the time it's leash walks around our society, which is fortunately quite spacious.



Most of our walks are devoted to sniffing, following scents, and generally catching up on news about the other animals here. What I mean is, Kimaya does the sniffing and I obediently trot behind!

I do wish we could keep the noonday walk brief though. It's meant to be only for elimination, but the brat craftily 'holds on' till she's examined at least half the car tyres on the premises. If she does this in May I might just die.

There are 10 other pet dogs in our society, plus two dogs living in the compound, plus at least 12 resident cats and several feline visitors. I believe there are a couple of rats as well. So there's just LOTS to sniff in limited time.

She would really need a few hours to get a complete smell-picture of the place.

Only about one-third of our time is spent on vigorous walking and of course a few seconds on the necessary 'jobs'.

A friend once commented that Kimaya's walks were not really walks at all. We don't huff and puff around in a military-type drill. But that's probably how it should be. How boring and sterile our apartment must be for the dogs. No interesting smells at all (except in the dustbin, which is locked away). No other animals coming and going let alone peeing!

So on walks we have an understanding that the dogs can amble around sniffing freely, so long as they don't try to pull me to the trash area, or chase cats, or pick up bones or pigeon poop or other such rubbish.

Because of this agreement, my dogs are quite obedient about the no-pulling rule.
Some might actually mistake them for well-behaved dogs!!

Mumbai

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