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.