Golden fleece, puppy face

Nearly a month has passed since we lost our darling Bandra, but I haven't been able to bring myself to write about him. There's too much to say. I don't know where to begin and where to end.

So I'll tell you about him through these pictures taken over the four wonderful years we had together.



Bandra's portrait by photographer Heather Fener, January 2009

Bandra didn't have much INDog in him, as you can see from his photos. He was possibly a retriever-mix.

He was I think an abandoned dog, dumped at Bandra station where he then lost a foreleg in a train accident. A terrible maggot infestation followed, but he was rescued eventually and brought to the NGO I worked for at the time. In spite of the betrayal and trauma, he didn't lose his affection for people nor an ounce of his cheerfulness or goofy sense of fun. He battled liver cancer (successfully) in 2006, and also severe hypothyroidism.



This is how he looked at the time of his rescue (2005) and adoption (2006)

Four fun years followed, for him and even more so for us. He was a king in our house. There was an ongoing competition for status with Lalee, but they were actually rather fond of each other, with quite a bit of friendly sniffing and tail-wagging when they thought we weren't looking!



The sight of him rolling on the bed always made us laugh. Here he had settled down for a nap after a vigorous belly-rub from my husband. Scratching and belly-rubs were Kiran's chief duties on reaching home every evening.

He made frequent trips with us to our bungalow near the sea, where he divided his time between the sofa, the garden and the beach. Click here, here and here for some earlier posts about him in this blog.











The five beach photos above were taken by photographer Rohan Mukerjee, 2008. Above: With Lalee and Lucy.



Being an amputee didn't bother him much. He could run pretty fast, and jump on the bed too. Long walks tired him though and he would often have to sit and rest his leg.

Because of his hopping gait, I gave him the nickname "Bunny" and that's what we usually called him. Also "Bam-bam." One of the lovely things about animals is that they don't mind being given silly names!



Below: Rolling on the grass with Kimaya



The end was sudden and shocking, a silent massive cardiac arrest. But possibly this was the best and least painful way to go. He was blessed. So were we.

It's always too sudden and always too soon to lose a beloved family member, as a friend told me after his death. This is so true. She also reminded me that dogs live in the moment and rarely let thoughts of the past or future bother them. This is a gift and something we should, but don't, learn from our animal friends. Belonging to a sadder species I can't shake off the mourning very easily. I want to believe we'll meet again, some day.

But Bandra was a sunny soul, always cheerful and smiling and always a puppy in his head, though he was probably ten years old at the time he left us. The best tribute I could pay him would be to enjoy each moment as he did.

So I don't want to feel sad when I think of him. He deserves better. I want to remember him as he is in these pictures.

Golden, shining, brave, innocent and happy forever.

Bring that doggie home...

Our move to Bangalore from Mumbai (or Bombay as I prefer to call it) was heartwrenching. And when I saw this doggie near the gate of our apartment, I looked away. He had such melting brown eyes – no more heart aches for me, I thought and ignored him completely for several months to come. But as wise men say, one cannot fight destiny.

Doggies do break hearts. Let us begin with Poochie. Poochie was almost my sibling, not a dog, or so she thought. Well, it is true she was part of the family. Born in our own garden in Bandra, I swear she called my Mum, 'Mum' as well.

There were two of them: Brown, fierce, independent, female puppy – Poochie (as she was later named) and her brother - fluffy, lazy, cuddly and spotless white. Unfortunately their mum, also a brown stray doggie, died soon after in a car accident.

It was for us to rear these puppies. Poochie's brother found a home and Poochie found a way into our hearts.

Our family agreed that she was a highly intelligent and 'educated' dog, this more than made up for her mixed breed. It is true; she was my constant companion, from standard seventh till after I qualified as a CA. From mugging History and Hindi to Economics and other mundane stuff, Poochie stoically bore it all. In fact she relished performing a war dance on my stomach to wake me up when the alarm went off, early in the morning, when I got up to study. And then she went to sleep, sometimes on my warm bed. I didn't have the heart to pull her off the bed and on to her equally cosy extra large cushion. Of course for bearing the long study hours, there were frills attached – lots of hugs, unexpected titbits of treats – she loved apples and cheese, long walks, dips in the sea.

Interestingly, Poochie shared a special relationship with Silky the cat. Silky was our pet even before Poochie entered our lives and Silky mothered this little pup. Let us add that Silky was extremely productive - with a litter of kittens almost every three months. Poochie, once she was grown up, played the godmother and a good one at that. Silky's departure was rather tragic, she ran away from the vet's clinic and Poochie mourned for days over her absence. But one could never keep Poochie down for long and she was soon back to her cheerful self. While she adored Silky, any other cat was her sworn enemy.

When Poochie expired - close to twelve years old – of a heart attack, in my mother's arms, my parents were stricken with grief. But I could not shed a single tear. It just seemed that a part of me had died. It was then that I decided, "No more dogs equals no more heartbreaks."

Fast forward: Six years after Poochie's death, we trundled into Bangalore. And there was 'Snowy', standing at the gate waiting for us. But, no, I turned away. I did not have to feel very guilty. Snowy was fed by our neighbours. They had a cocker spaniel and used to feed Snowy, apparently an abandoned doggie, with leftovers and extra rotis thrown in.

Then, as fate would have it, within six months this family shifted and we took over the responsibility of providing Snowy with food. Guess a dog needs love as much as food. So I would spend time talking to Snowy (who was a bit deaf) hoping we could adopt him and bring him home.

Slowly his spirit returned, he became active, began to bark at strangers, chase cars, and flirt with the female doggies. Yet he could never ever become our full-time house dog. I so wanted to hug him, as I used to Poochie. Why, I would have even given up my warm bed for him, had Snowy agreed to stay with us. The barrier remained, we could not pat Snowy. He shied away if we tried to. Perhaps he could not really trust another human being to pat him. I wonder till today what trauma he had to undergo in the past.

All we could do was provide him with food; shelter he took in the basement when it poured and an animal welfare organization took care of his medical needs and regularly pinned him down for various shots.

While Poochie used to welcome me with warm hugs and licks every evening when I returned home, Snowy used to give me an equally warm sendoff. He used to chase my car when I would leave for work. When I was in the car I did not seem to pose a threat to Snowy. This became an everyday game; he would bound up grinning to send me off to work, every morning without fail with excited yips and yaps.

On September 20, 2006, we found him curled up and dead in his sleep.

Yes, in a way he was my dog. Yet a dog I could never pat and hug and hold. Snowy was not my Poochie, yet he held a special place in my heart and I miss him. The road still seems so empty, there is no one to bark and say "Have a nice day at work."

Today, owing to personal reasons, I am unable to take care of a dog. But if you can, you must. Try and befriend them and take them home. At times you may fail, like we did with Snowy, but I'd like to think we gave him the best possible love and affection.

Yes, dogs do break hearts, but the love they provide and the lasting memories that you retain forever and ever, more than make up for it.

Lubna Kably
Bangalore

In the photo: Snowy

Teddy, soft toy-cum-therapy dog

Meet Teddy/Puppy, our live "soft toy," the like of which you will never get at any swanky Mall in the world.

This unexpected "gift" was actually thrown by somebody into my garden here in Jogeshwari, alongwith his brother and sister, when they were a few weeks old and barely able to stand. My daughters Kainaaz and Khushnam immediately fell in love with them and we fed them milk and arranged for water to be available for them in the garden. However, since we could not keep all three, we decided to keep little Teddy as he was always getting attacked and shooed away by the other two siblings. So we sent away the other two to nearby housing societies.

Initially we kept him in the garden and he would sleep in my garage as the garage door was slightly broken and he could squeeze in from the broken area. But he would happily come running when we came to check on him a few times, toppling over cutely while running on his podgy little legs, which made him all the more dear to us. Then as time passed we decided to take him into our house, which he carefully inspected with his powerful nose. Never once did he dirty the house, he seemed to have been born house-trained!

He is very playful and very intelligent. My younger daughter Khushnam has declared herself to be his mother, so that makes my elder daughter Kainaaz his doting "masiji" (aunt). And my wife and I his grandparents!! We all adore him. I feel he is some past ancestor of ours who has come in this form. I sometimes see him looking at me with such love and affection in his probing brown eyes, as if trying to jog my memory into recognising who he is, and I just go and hug him for a few moments, which also gives me some kind of heartfelt satisfaction which cannot be explained. Even though he often shakes himself vigorously after a hug, as if some dirt has got smeared on him! Talk about insults!

When we come home he comes halfway down our steps to give us a warm welcome, tail wagging away furiously. He has been a great form of healing therapy for us through all the problems we have faced in our life.

We have a nightly after-dinner ritual: He religiously comes and gets the inaccessible parts of his back scratched by me with the help of a broken footruler. He simultaneously lifts up his hind leg and starts scratching himself wherever his paw can reach. If I stop scratching for a moment when some interesting news comes on NDTV, he waits for few seconds and then nudges my hand with his cold nose to remind me to continue scratching. My girls enjoy this reaction from him. But once he is satisfied he quietly walks away to his bedding, sometimes leaving my hand mechanically swinging away with the footruler in the air as if I am painting, much to my family's amusement.

These two pictures are more than two years old. He has now turned five and is much fatter.

We all wish that our pet dogs had a longer life to lead instead of just 15 or 18 years.

Rusi Mistry

Bandra