Dog Eats Dog Scene

I had heard the phrase “dog eats dog world” before. But never did I image that this would be literally true also. Recently, I came across a sad and disgusting scene at our village.

It started sounding like a nice story. Sometime back, four or five puppies were born in our neighborhood. Somehow, most of them were females. Two of them started living near a relative’s house. They were lean and fit female dogs. They roamed around the house and followed any person who came out of it, especially a girl. Whenever she went out of her house, one of the two female dogs would follow her. These two dogs had superbly emotional eyes. If they came near our house and I would try to scare them away, they would just look at me in the eye and when I looked into their eyes, I found no fear at all. Instead, I found only a question in those innocent eyes; asking me what was I doing? At that moment, I would get confused and leave them.

By now, these two female dogs which had remained in the neighborhood had become adults (dogs grow too fast). And I never noticed when they had become pregnant. Last month, one fine morning, the neighborhood was awaken with a curious sight.

We realized that the two female dogs or bitches who were sisters; both had delivered babies on the same night. And how many? There were ten puppies in total! It was assumed that both of them had delivered five each. Now, both were seen taking care of those ten puppies, without any differentiation or discrimination. When the mother dogs walked, ten tiny puppies used to follow them. No one had ever seen so many little puppies at one place before.

Over the days that followed, none of the puppies were lost which was a miracle. Small kids would come to play with the puppies and the mother dogs would allow them to play. Small kids on their way to the school would spend few minutes daily watching the puppies or playing with them. One day, three small girls were passing by on their way to the school. Suddenly, they were seen running scared. After reaching safe distance, one of them told the other two a formula: “never run, otherwise the dog would chase and bite you. Just stand still of walk slowly”. These little girls were scared of those tiny puppies! Few boys were much braver who would play with the puppies by picking them up and moving here and there.

A month passed by, and the ten puppies were still ten. Then two of them were taken away by a relative to their home in the city to be raised as pets. After that, one puppy was hit and killed by a car and another by an auto rickshaw. Now six remained.

After a few days, one of the mother dogs appeared to be too thin and she started sitting far away from the puppies. It was so because whenever the female dogs would come near the puppies, the puppies would chase them and start drinking their milk. This mother-dog was perhaps not well or not in a condition to feed the puppies and hence she made herself unavailable. After a few days someone commented that she was perhaps going to die! I did not take it seriously, until after a few days she was never seen again. Perhaps she went to some other place?

The remaining and only mother dog now, was still feeding the puppies. The six puppies that were left, were now growing up at different paces. Three of them had grown taller and stronger while three others, who also had black spots, were much smaller. It was clear that they were from two different sets of parents. By now, the remaining female dog was also seen training the puppies to run and jump. Then, the final episode came.

One afternoon, I saw a disgusting scene. The female dog had brought some other dog’s partial-carcass at some distance and the puppies were all eating it! The carcass was already eaten by some other dogs as it had mainly bones remaining now. After leaving the carcass with the puppies, she went to some distance and sat down, watching them. It seemed she was now training the puppies to eat meat and other rotten food; and moving them away from her milk as their only diet. As the puppies ate the carcass, it stared smelling bad and hence I went nearby and tried to scare the puppies; but the puppies won’t even look at me! After much efforts, a few smaller puppies went away while two bigger puppies won’t leave their food. I threw some stones towards them, but each stone missed the target. Then I decided to give up and left the puppies have their meals; thinking that after they finish it, the smell would also go away. But then a realization hit me.

The carcass which the puppies were eating, was surely of a dog. How could I tell? It constituted only bones or skeleton but the face still had skin over it and face had not been eaten by anyone. And the face was clearly of a dog. But what had become clear to me by now was the fact that it was the face of that other female dog which had gone missing a few days ago!

The innocent eyed, fearless mother dog which had given birth to five puppies, and later withdrew herself to a distance after she was not well, while watching over her kids being taken care by her sister-dog, had died and her body was being eaten by her own …? The realization was revolting, and I tried not to think about it again.

But now I have put this episode on my blog, feeling guilty of the crime. The crime of having seen the “dog eats dog world”.

- Rahul Tiwary