Oh My Dog

Losing would be painful, but not as painful as knowing there was something else you could have done.

                                                                                                                                      -Joe Trippi 

After a long time, the weekend weather was just too good to be true. We had fun with bunch of friends whole weekend at our home and the weekend just showed its face on Friday and flew and I don't have any regrets because it was fun! The only not so fun part was what happened with Alice.

So, like every sunny day she went out with Crissie to play whole day and came back in the evening. Since these days its not sunny and pleasant she gets to go to Crissie only once in a while so we increased her outing time when she goes to do business in the backyard in the evening on days she didn't go to Crissie's backyard. Mornings, she still has to come back on time after business since we are in a hurry to start office work but in the evenings, she would just roam in the backyard (it's not fenced and she never goes out of sight unless there is some dog around) till my husband would say "Alice, Come in". Oh yes! Before that he would ask her after 10 minutes of her roaming, "Alice, are you done?" and she would just look at us and would give a gesture of "Oh no, not yet" and continue to roam, but she takes it as a warning and buys a little more time though she might be done. Then in another 10-15 minutes he would say "Alice, Come in" and she will come running inside the house.

So coming back to what happened yesterday, since she came back in the evening, we would generally assume that she would have done her business at their place but we still let her out once again on such days before we would call it a day to avoid accidents. Raj left her around 12:30AM (night) while we were still playing with our friends. Let me remind you if you have not seen her or her pictures in the blog, she is completely black and the amount of tan she has on her skin is negligible. That tan is pretty visible in the day light but in the night, forget it. So we consider she is black. So my husband got this blinking red light kind of gadget from Wal-mart that blinks when she moves, so that we can track her. But well that broke a week back and she has been a good dog and comes back as soon as we call.

Sorry, I keep going back; but I have to build the background. So again, he left her at 12:30AM (night) and was feeling too sleepy, so I called him for a game that we were playing with friends as he was planning to go up and sleep after she comes back. But we got so involved in the game that we totally forgot about Alice and kept playing for half an hour. Suddenly he got up and said **** "Alice is outside" and I was alarmed. I was changing my daughter's diaper but I cant believe, I left her as it is and went running outside. He got a torch and we started looking for her calling her name. She was nowhere in sight. Our friends all came outside and helped us to call her. I started crying loud and my mom who was sleeping upstairs came down, picked my daughter (who probably was startled with our behavior), as she sensed something went wrong. Then suddenly we saw something moving in the woods and BOOM, there she comes running after may be 2 minutes of calling. To tell you the truth I already have tears in my eyes now. Guess she thought she also got a night out like us. I think she was stuck in the woods but made her way back. Everyone was telling that dogs come back and my experience also says so but I know what I went through. To tell you frankly she is such a sweet and friendly dog that even if someone sees her roaming somewhere with her tag that has our name and phone number, I don't trust they will call up and tell us about her instead will just keep her :) I am just too scared of losing her. Too much! Thanked goodness for sending her back.

I almost thought we lost her and I sensed the fear of loosing her once again. We have decided to not go out of sight till she is in after business. In the morning when I got up and came down, I once again thanked God for blessing us with her.

This is her first day at our home/her new home in 2007

Memoirs

When a dog barks at the moon, then it is religion; but when he barks at strangers, it is patriotism!  

                                                                                                                     David Starr Jordan

So yesterday someone was talking about how their dog behaves differently to different people for the same situation and I obviously went back to the great old days with Laika.

I was may be in 5th standard while this was happening. We had subscribed for two newspapers at home, one was Hindi Newspaper and the other was Tamil Newspaper (one of the many regional languages of India). Hindi was for dad and Tamil was for mom. These newspaper distributor guys used to come in bi-cycle at different timings and throw newspaper in our road facing balcony and leave. Laika would obviously bark at them as she would take this act of throwing stuff at home as a sign of danger. The fun part was whenever the Hindi newspaper guys used to throw Hindi paper she used to hold the paper in her mouth and bring to Appa but whenever the Tamil newspaper guy do the same thing she will tear the paper into pieces and her face will glow with a sign of relief, satisfaction and proud. We never understood that logic until one day we discovered the truth.

That day we hid and saw when the Hindi newspaper guy came to throw the paper. He threw it and went like anybody would do. Then we stayed to watch the Tamil newspaper guy and we saw that he used to do something unusual and dogs don't welcome unusual things. He used to tease Laika from the road and do some signs that would irritate her and then throw the paper which forced her to behave aggressively with his paper and she would tear it thinking something is not right with this paper or may be she just didn't like that guy and didn't want his paper at our home. After seeing this my dad shouted at him and asked him not to do so and surprisingly Laika stopped tearing the Tamil newspapers and would bring them in her mouth and hand it over to my mom.

All these funny behaviors of Laika urged my husband to get a dog for us also. These silly things might be nothing to people who don't love dogs or are indifferent to dogs. I write this blog exclusively for people who like dogs but don't have one because their spouse is scared of dogs or they themselves are scared of dogs but still like them, or who like dogs and have one. My personal suggestion is read my blog if you want to convince your spouse to get a dog. My blog would be a never ending topic for such people, well mixed with sweet and sour stuff.

Oh, coming back to present, Eesha and Alice have started interacting with each other. I am just waiting for the summers so that we all can have some fun. One of the the great pleasures of having a dog is that you may make a fool of yourself with him and not only will he not be angry at you or laugh at you but he will make a fool of himself too. That's the reason I guess they say that Dog is the only living being in this world who has seen his God.

The Other side of the coin

Dogs are animals that poop in public and you're supposed to pick it up. After a week of doing this, you've got to ask yourself, "Who's the real master in this relationship?"

                                                                                                                              Anthony Griffin

Every day might be a New day but I am sure everyone agrees that not every day is a good day. It was the Thursday before Christmas and we woke up in pretty fun mood not realizing how worse it can become in another 2 hours. After doing our daily chores in the morning I came down to have breakfast. Alice would generally come and say Good Morning in her own way and play softly with Eesha and leave. But that day she didn't. I noticed and assumed she must be tired after the previous day workout with Crissie because she went out after a long time. Crissie doesn't come out too often in winters as she is a short haired Dog and catches cold soon.

So I decided to go see Alice after breakfast. Meanwhile my husband came down and right when I was about to leave, my husband said the bad "S" word and I saw that Alice had pooped on the carpet. Let me remind you she is 3 years old, completely housebroken, potty trained long back and completely understands where to potty and where not to. I was surprised, my husband was in a shock (see the difference between mother and father) I am not in here to describe her poop but frankly speaking it wasn't looking normal. Suddenly I remembered that she didn't come to me in the morning to say Good Morning. I tried to recall when she played with me last time while my husband was busy thinking of ways to clean the mess. He was getting late for office, so was I but at least I was all ready to leave so I took the initiative to clean it. Sounds crazy right "I was all ready for office that's why i could clean and he was not ready yet so he could not" as if you need to get ready and properly dressed up to clean such a mess. Obviously it is not completely gone but a friend suggested to use White vinegar to clean it and it worked very well. I would suggest that to anyone now.

I relaxed and remembered that she didn't come to say me hi the previous evening either when I came back from office. I did not take that seriously but guess she was not well. We stayed with her spoke to her gently; she was highly guilty though. It's funny to describe how she behaves when she is guilty. She will completely lie down on her belly, that's the way she says sorry. We just have to raise our voice a little and she knows her fault. Sometime even that is not required like this time she was just too guilty to come and say Good Morning and didn't look at us in the eye. She was fine a little later.

This was the other side of the coin but I choose to ignore this as this becomes void as you look at the previous side of the coin.