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.

The Bonding

No symphony orchestra ever played music like a two-year-old girl laughing with a puppy.

                                                                                             Bern Williams

 

So Eesha is now 8 months old and Alice is 3 years and they have started reacting to each other. We keep reading about these articles where Dog's aggressive behavior lead to child's death and honestly speaking statistics show that most of the dogs who behave this way are either medium or large breed dogs and the kids are generally 5 or under. So we are not very confortable leaving Eesha anywhere around Alice unsupervised unless we have locked child gates though it hurts to think that way and it hurtthe most on that beautiful day when Alice showed her concern for Eesha,

The other day we were all upstairs with Alice. Eesha had fallen asleep on her hi-chair in kitchen so we left her there. Oh by the way this is the same day when our painter was in and Alice accompanied us upstairs with him.  So, on our way down, she was behind me and my husband when suddenly Eesha started making some sounds as if she was about to cry, guess she suddenly realized that no one was around. We knew she was doing this because she realized she was alone so we didn't hurry to reach her as we were already on our way but what was surprising was Alice pushed us hard on the stairs and ran towards Eesha . The child gate didn't let her get inside the kitchen but she at least made it to the kitchen where Eesha could see her. Obviously that didn't mean anything to Eesha but it meant a lot to Alice. So when I appeared she gave me the look as if trying to say "I have made sure nothing is wrong".

It's very important that they have bonding with each other and we try to do that every time they are together. We are eagerly waiting for the winters to be over so that Eesha can have some fun with Alice and also Alice can have some fun with herself. Meanwhile you guys can have some fun watching how my lovely dog searches for me when she know knows I am still somewhere around but not visible.

Man's Best Friends

If you don't own dogs, not even one, then there is not necessarily anything wrong with you, but there may be something wrong with your life.

                                                                                                                                         Roger Caras

So I am back with "my" dog news

So let me start this post with a new name Fyisty; she is Alice's biological sister.  We met her in October 2007, when we went to see Alice for the very first time. She is a nice dog and very protective. How we knew, so here is the story. 

She was playing with her owner when we reached there. As soon as we reached, she realized someone has come to meet them and became alert but did not bark at us. She was sticking like a tail with her owner whole time, while we were talking to him. We asked him why is she not barking at us? Is she trained not to bark or is she not barking because you are with us, becasue the kind of German Shepherd I was used to (Laika) barks at everyone who is not "blood related". Well things are different here I knew. So the owner explained "She is not barking because she doesn't find you harmful. At this moment you are having a friendly conversation with me. The moment you raise your voice or show any signs of harming me like raising your hands or touching me, she can read my discomfort and will show her true colors then!!" Pretty scary to stand beside a dog with that type of feelings...though we were not upto something like that :)

Now coming back to present, over the weekend we requested our interior painter to give us a visit/quote etc as we wanted to get our house painted this year. He came to our home around 8:00PM on Friday. He was pretty friendly because he is actually someone from our community and Alice knows him very well. She sees him all the time around like when we go out for walks or when he comes around our cul-de-sac. To tell you how much she knows him, let me tell you another story in short. Once we were at office and she was playing with the neighbor's dog in their fenced backyard, the gate was not locked properly which opened with wind and these dogs were obviously on a "Dogs day out" or who knows might have been "Dogs DAYS out". Fred saw them suddenly near the other end of the community while he was returning from somewhere. He recognized them and brought them back in his pick up truck and left them in our neighbor's backyard. I must tell that was pretty close to losing her or who knows she might have come back by herself. But anyway so she knows him very well and welcomes him in the cul-de-sac always. But this was the first time he was coming inside our home while she was there. And I have to tell you how efficiently she made sure that she was there ALL THE TIME BETWEEN HIM AND US for our protection even though she was so friendly with him. She didn't leave us for one second. She is generally not allowed upstairs but that day she just followed us where ever we went with him. But what was funny was she probably didn't want him to feel bad (in case he doesn't turn out to be "bad guy") about what she is thinking so she was playing with him in between a couple of times.

Unfortunately I was just too engrossed with the painter and the painting and failed to notice this beautiful moment until my husband pointed it out after the painter left. 

Now, THAT was a lovely feeling to know that someone is there for me even if no one is there.

There forever...

With eye upraised his master's look to scan, The joy, the solace, and the aid of man: The rich man's guardian and the poor man's friend, The only creature faithful to the end

                                                                                                                               -George Crabbe

Last night I was watching this movie "Marley and Me" for the 100th time and it filled my eyes with tears as we approached towards the climax. I felt like murdering the director of this movie. For some reason he had to show that Marley died in the end but he could have as well shown that he ended up in heaven thus bringing him to life in another world because that's where all dogs end up . Love that movie still.

It reminds me of Laika, my childhood German shepherd. She died on September 24th 1996. She had been a very healthy dog till she was 10 but as she approached her old age things started changing. I remember  days when she was unable to climb the stairs, we used to carry her to the second floor once she was done with her business. She used to cooperate so well in troubles also. When she was 9 she was suffering from Pneumonia and Doctor gave her an injection but told us the truth He had absolutely no hopes that she will make it through the night. We couldn't sleep that night with the thought of not being able to see her alive next day. But she survived and went on for another one year. We thought the problem is solved but actually the problems had just begun. She started catching cold cough very frequently, her body was not supporting her.

In general she always preferred to be around us (My sister and I). She would come to our study room in the night and sit beside our chairs while we were studying. We were scared of being alone in night but when she was around we had no fear. She will stay with us till we are not done with what we are doing and will walk out with us when we are done. Nobody taught her to do all this, she just had it in her. She would never leave us and go away. She was very brave and would leave no stone unturned if she sees any danger around us.

So that night we were preparing for our exam for the next day and she came and lied down in our study room as usual. We noticed her and continued to study. Soon it was time to sleep, so we bid her goodnight and she did too with wet eyes. We came to the bedroom to sleep, not knowing that was her last night with us....she passed away that night. We came to know early morning when we came to see her. It was again me and my sister who saw in the morning that she didn't move from there after we bid her goodnight. We touched her and her body was stiff like a rock. Probably she expired immediately after she bid us goodnight...

She didn't realize she took 11 years of our life with her and now we are just left with memories as we buried her in our hearts....

Coming back to present, today morning when i got up and saw Alice, I was so glad that she is a part of our lives and helps me to keep alive the memories of Laika. I played with her a little in the morning before I left for office and I must say everyday she becomes more adorable than the previous day...

Look how she tries to hide from me

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!