As they are growing...

Dogs are not our whole life, but they make our lives whole.

Our daughter Eesha is now 8 months old and Alice is 3 yrs. It's so much fun to watch them grow together. Alice plays quite safe when Eesha comes in front of her and in fact Eesha is the one whom we have to control all the time to avoid any accidents. Having a dog is such a nice feeling and I realized it when I was a kid. I had my first German shepherd, Laika when I was a kid and it was then I realized that there are so many good things to learn from a dog and that's when I decided that when my baby is growing up I must have a dog.

Laika was a very sweet dog. She was aggressive with anyone who was not "blood" related to us, at least that is what we concluded because she used to bark for closest of our friends but will wag her tail for farthest of our relatives (family related ones) I am still not sure how she understood who is relative and who is friend. Even if the relative is visiting us for the first time in life she would wag her tail. Guess she smells our blood in them :) She was loyal sweet protective a doll and a monster at times. She would not allow any one to cross the road in front of our house. Thank goodness we lived in second floor.

We were simple middle class people with a small one bedroom house, so we didn't have any place for her inside so she used to stay outside and guard whole night. Temperatures in that part of the world would never go down below 60, so she was always safe outside. But one day we realized the fear of having her outside when she saved us from a snake. We were not at home and she was tied outside in the balcony. While we were approaching towards the home after parking our two wheeler in front of the house that night, she started barking suddenly. She would never do that normally. She will always jump and welcome us from far itself. But her bark was aggressive this time and it became worse every second. We were confused and didn't understand. My dad got some hint and asked us to stay far and we went far from there but could still see her aggressive behavior. It was night time around 11:00PM and nothing was visible on the grass. Finally we saw something blue glittering in the dark and that's when we realized that there is a snake and Laika was trying to warn us. My dad managed to kill that snake with a stick with the help of our neighbor and we could see the happiness on Laika's face. We were so proud of her.

No doubt, Alice reminds me of her. I would love to spend my life with dogs, and I look forward to learning many of their traits, especially being patient and being there when you need.

Happy Friday!