Dog Obsession

FOR AS LONG as I can remember, dogs have been part of my family. When I say part of the family, I mean something a little more than having dogs as pets. I literally mean that they took over our lives. From understanding their distinctive idiosyncrasies and yielding to them to tailoring our travel plans to accommodate their emotional needs, our dog obsession has been incorrigible.

It will undoubtedly be said that this preoccupation with dogs is a rich person’s thing and that the debate today is not about pampered pets but stray dogs, which are portrayed as child killers. They may have half a point, but in my understanding—based entirely on personal experiences—this completely needless controversy is a mentality problem.

First, there are those who feel that the presence of street dogs in a locality is a sign that we are still in a pre-modern age. They will point to the time the big metros had cows that roamed the streets and often slowed down the traffic. These cows were, of course, not strays— at least in the cities. They were part of neighbourhood dairies— called khatals in the Calcutta of my childhood—that provided fresh milk to the privileged. With ‘progress’ and municipal over-intrusiveness, these ramshackle cow sheds were relocated to satellite towns. As a child, I visited Bombay in 1963 and was taken to one of these new milk towns. My Google search tells me it was called Aarey Milk Colony, established in 1949. In Calcutta, Dr BC Roy—the only chief minister who did anything worthwhile for West Bengal— created something similar in Haringhata, quite close to the satellite town of Kalyani, which never quite took off.

It is worth exploring if the scheme to relocate dogs to ‘shelters’ outside the big cities has its origin in these milk colonies that were established after Independence as part of the journey to modernity. I don’t think the noble souls who envisaged such a scheme have any firsthand experience of dogs. If they did, they would have known that these will end up as canine death camps. I understand from a social media post that a stray-free experiment was attempted in IIT Madras, with horrific results.

In most localities of India, there are neighbourhood strays. They are fed by either some collective endeavour or attach themselves to kindly individuals who see the dogs both as pets and watchdogs. Then there are strays that are attached to markets and complement the security guards who patrol these places at night. These market dogs faced considerable hardships during the Covid lockdown when their support systems were abruptly suspended. Many volunteers stepped in to feed the dogs and all of them have touching stories to tell.

The simple point is that there is a bonding that exists between the street dogs and the community to which they are attached.

Secondly, there are those who somehow see dogs as inherently unclean and recoil in disgust at the sight of these four-legged beasts. There is nothing I can say about this distaste except that it is an individual preference. However, I am struck by the uncanny knack of dogs to locate exactly those who are petrified of them. It almost seems that they rush to such people to allay their fears. The results, alas, are quite counterproductive.

Finally, over the years there are fewer stray puppies running all over the place and getting run over by speeding cars. This is due to the spectacular work that has been done by voluntary organisations in providing veterinary services and sterilising street dogs. Having availed of their services for neighbourhood dogs which need medical assistance, I can vouch for their dedication. This also includes maintaining erstwhile pets which have been heartlessly abandoned by their erstwhile owners. The ‘boss’ of our house in Delhi is one such dog whom we rescued from imminent abandonment in Bengaluru. She dominates her brother who came into this world as a result of his mother’s one night stand with a neighbourhood street dog.

In the past fortnight, many of those who take policy decisions that control our lives should have realised that the dog families make up a significant community of voters. They are all terribly upset at the prospect of a possible canine genocide. Upset enough to have decided that their vote will go against any party they see as promoting this inhuman conduct.

Based on my experience with elections, I can say with certainty that while it takes a huge amount of support to win an election, it takes very little for a determined minority to scupper someone’s chances. Riling dog lovers was so unnecessary.

child killersIndian societymenacepetsstray dogsStreet dogsSupreme Court of India