Sophie at three

The latest update on beautiful Goa Indy Sophie, sent in by her proud owner! 
If you are new to this blog, you can read her earlier posts here and here.

This month on 7 September Sophie turned three, and believe me – she just gets smarter and cuter all the time!

She loves her morning walks, and in addition to walking up the beautiful Goan hills and smelling the flowers, she also enjoys meeting and playing with all her friends. She is terribly energetic and that keeps her totally slim and fit. Even her vet asks how does she manage to maintain her shape? Normally neutered dogs will put on a lot of weight - but not our Sophie! Always working it off. Walking running and jumping around in the hills.

She’s a lovely friendly dog, with a beautiful temperament, and is friends with all the dogs in the colony. The dogs that live with their humans and the ownerless ones too. Okay she’s smart and intelligent and initially tends to be the top-dog when she meets a new doggy – but after she’s told to 'be nice, that’s a friendly doggy', she’s great with all dogs and even with cats. And most other animals too. We have on occasion bumped into a wild boar, a monkey, some snakes and a group of peafowl on our morning walks in the hills. And she’s been really great with them. Really proud of her – as an animal lover. No aggression, no chasing, no barking. Stops, looks at me (as if to ask 'did you see that?') and then sits with me and watches them go by. After that wants to smell where they’ve walked etc. Understands 'be careful', knows (instinctively) to be careful of snakes and such, and basically totally mirrors the animal lovers she lives with.

She helped me rescue a tiny kitten a week back who’s safely with a friend now; adopted and entertaining all there. Lovely little kitten that was shivering and scared of Sophie – who was only trying to protect him – till I came and then she literally dragged me to see the kitten and kept looking at me, as if to say 'what’ll we do with him now?' 

She does have her favourite friends too. There’s the brown dog (Brownie – that lives with a neighbour down the road) whom she loves to meet and play, nay, horse around with, big time, every morning after her walk. They look like they’re attacking each other  but are just playing, believe me. And there’s the small female free-roamer (gray one in the pics) that she loves having for company on her walks… Right up the hills and back.

She is an extremely picky eater. Loves tasty stuff and will eat almost anything, provided it tastes good. Loves pasta, with or without sauce, loves vegetables and will eat meats only once a day. Chapatis are her favourite as are soups (any type even spinach), ice-cream and pudding.

She loves to join me in feeding the colony free-roamers. She will get really mad and start barking her head off at me, if I go out and feed them without her.

Remember how she organized her own adoption? Well she’s now helping me with the important ABC (animal birth control) stuff for all her friends in the colony where she lives.

She helped me catch them to send them to the local neutering centre – and missed them like anything while they were away for three days getting spayed and recovering, and was ecstatic when they came back!

In fact the day they were all gone, she was totally down, very quiet and even refused to eat the whole day, wondering where her friends had gotten to and what we’d done with them. I think seeing them being loaded into the caged-truck somewhat upset her…

When I got back in the evening I took her to where she normally meets them and explained to her that they’ll 'be back soon,' words she understands as we often tell her that when someone’s gone off somewhere. And she gets it. So she understood and then was back to normal!

Text and photos: David

Goa

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