Nature: Story of a Dog-mother

I go for an evening walk in my neighborhood park. I make two rounds of walk along the walking track. A few days back, I met with something unexpected.

That day, as soon as I reached a particular corner of the park, I saw a female dog barking at me. It was in the bushes; but moved a bit ahead and tried to make me go away. I moved briskly and walked away. When I reached the same spot in the second round, once again the same dog started barking at me. I wondered why it was doing it and kept walking.

The next day, I had forgotten about above incident. But once again as soon as I reached that corner of the park, the same dog started barking at me. I literally shouted at it, “Why are you after me?” I noticed that the female dog was a bit malnourished. I decided not to take any further chances and started avoiding that corner of the park.

The next day while walking, I once again reached the same spot of the park. Without waiting for the dog to bark at me, I stared to walk away fast. But then I noticed something. In the bushes, there was a small pup. It was completely black. Then I noticed that by that time the dog-mother had noticed me and had started barking at me. At least now I got her reason for barking at me – she was trying to prevent anyone getting near her baby!

After a while I noticed the same dog-mother outside the area. She was searching for some food here and there. I felt a bit sad for her. She must have hidden her pup somewhere in the park and then would have ventured outside to search for food. Until the kid grows up, she would have to find more food to feed herself as well as her kid.

By now, I had remembered that corner of the park and started avoided going there. Once a while I would see some other walkers go to that corner and I would hear the dog-mother barking at them. But the people looked comfortable, perhaps because they walked in groups. I imagined the hard time they were giving to the dog-mother.

This evening, I saw a more interesting scene.

A girl had taken her pet dog to the park. She was walking with her pet dog; the dog was big and completely black. And then I saw that from that corner of the park, the same dog-mother and her pup were going after them. Both were barking at the girl and her dog! And the pup had kept the same body-language as its mother! It was behaving as if it was some big dog itself. After a while, the pet-dog looked back at the mother-son and scared them by barking at them. The mother-dog and her pup immediately went back a few steps. But they started barking again. By this time the girl and her pet dog had gone away from that place.

After encountering this dog-mother and her pup, my walks in the park are no longer enjoyable like before; since I can’t go to full stretch and I have to turn back after reaching that spot. I am waiting for the pup to turn old enough. But I know that the dog-mother is more worried about the pup. While I write this, she would still be protecting that portion of the park – so that her pup would be safe. I can hear her barks in my mind.

- Rahul Tiwary

PS: 13-Feb: In between, occasionally I kept seeing dog-mother wandering far away in search of food. Sometimes she and her kid played around in the park; where she could be clearly seen training it. This evening, while she was playing with the pup, she was running after raising one of her legs; as one of her legs was seen hurt.