A Little Gentle Dog's Tale

When we came into our current housing society, we noticed that the security guards at the main gate had kept two pet dogs. These dogs were never chained; I think these were stray dogs that the security guards had befriended may be to grant them some amusement in their unexciting jobs. I noticed that they had tied a strip with ‘ghunghroos” (metallic bells) around one’s neck, perhaps because she was a female, and a leather belt around the other who was perhaps male. Over the time I became much of a fan of these dogs!

I think these dogs were saintly men in their past life, or will be born as ones in their next. They never barked! It was not that they could not bark; but they barked only to protest when some uninvited guest of their own race tried to do a trespass in our society’s campus. For the whole day they slept peacefully. But they did not sleep in some hideous place. They made it a point to lie down and take peaceful long (endless) naps only at the main gate, thereby communicating that they were not avoiding their duty! Both had white furs and were always clean. For many months, I saw these two dogs make themselves a peaceful and happy neighborhood of our society. But something troubling happened yesterday morning!

This Sunday morning the Municipal Corporation sent some men with a van to catch local stray dogs! Two men were standing at our main gate with a big net and stick in their hands. Their van was parked at some distance from our society, with around 20 dogs in it! I looked around for our dogs and found them wandering visibly uncomfortable at some distance from these guys. They must have smelled something fishy and hence were maintaining some distance from these guys, and were no longer sleeping or relaxing. I looked out for the watchman but he was nowhere around! My heart started beating loud and I became much scared... But I saw a man who was perhaps employed by the builder; he was telling the dog-catchers, “these are good dogs; have been here for many years now… they never create any troubles…” But the dog-catchers were not convinced and were on a constant look out for our gentle dogs to lie down. At that point, I went out of the society to buy something. I saw the dogs that were already captured in the van. All were standing tall, none were fighting or even talking to each other; and were looking out of the van… One old lady was looking at them from her house, as if trying to search for her favorite street dog there… (a lot of households feed the stray dogs at some hour of the day, in purely selfless gestures…)

These unfortunate dogs won’t be knowing what would happen with them in the coming hours. I myself did not know. Will they leave these dogs at a faraway distance from the city? Or will they feed them to the lions of one foreign circus which has been stationed in our city for many weeks now? Or will they simply poison and dump them somewhere? It was not nice to think about them. But these dogs won’t be knowing what could happen to them. We human beings write down our experiences in the form of books which our children could read and know about things; these dogs must not have seen such a tragic dog-catching van in their past which could ruin their life…

I came back to the society in 5 minutes after buying something. On my way, to my great pleasure, I watched the van driving away from our locality… I anxiously rushed to see if our dogs were unharmed, and there they were! Both the friendly dogs were now standing at the main gate of our society, visibly relieved but still attentive on finding the dog-catchers leave…

When we went on shopping during the latter part of the day, I was attracted to kids section where they had put lot of soft toys in a huge basket. I found so many small dogs there (toy-dogs and toy-puppies). While I waited for my wife to buy some essential stuff, I picked these pups up and tried to read their face. Some (toy) pups were funny; some were mischievous; some were sleepy. One looked so mischievous that I felt like pulling his ears and putting a gentle slap on him; another was cute and adorable. Some were big, bulky and uninteresting too. There was one which was a mix of all good things; his face was full of fun and he smiled with mischief and amusement. His ears were bent to the front and he had brought his rear legs to the front to sit much vertically. I wanted to take this dog home and my wife obliged!

So we brought this cute little (toy) pup home and I had my favorite place to keep him – our book-shelf. So I have kept it inside the book self and he looks out through its glass door. This morning, I woke up and went to meet him there. I looked into his eyes and remembered our small niece and nephew – they will love it! But I am not going to share my dog with them; I would rather buy them different ones and more, but not this!… Like all kids, I am possessive of my possessions and this little dog is my dearest as of now!!!

:)

So this was a little gentle dogs’ tale… 100% of what happened, happened in real life yesterday…

- Rahul