The Internet Personified: Dog days have just begun

Being a compendium of my thoughts on dogs

Hello, hello,

I’m writing to you from Bangalore, from the fifth floor of a fancy apartment building (there’s a POOL downstairs. It’s HEATED. I can’t get over it, I’m telling everybody about “my” heated pool*) where we are staying in K’s mother’s house while she travels, so someone can keep an eye on her dog, Lily.

(*I’ve also been swimming every morning, which is murdering my hair. Coconut oil to the rescue!)

Lily is a sweet, fluffy small dog, the sort you often see in women’s laps or yapping at you through a door as you trudge up the stairs, she’s of a breed that I was prejudiced against the same way some people hate Pitbulls or Dobermans. (I’m not sure I used to like Dobermans that much either, but our friends in Goa have a lovely Doberman/Rottweiler cross (Doberweiler? Rotterman?) who is very friendly, even though she has a barrel-chest and a deep booming bark, and a slightly ominous way of standing still and cocking her head when she’s focusing.) But I mean, I usually prefer big dogs to small ones, they’re more predictable, more friendly, they have all that classic Big Dog Energy, and they seldom yap at you or bite you for no reason. (I’ve met several unfriendly Daschunds who have done just that.)

Lily is the opposite of a yapping, bite-y dog though. She barely barks, barely even shows her teeth. She’s a rescue dog, taken from god knows what circumstances (I think a hoarder was involved, she was picked up from a small flat along with thirty other dogs just like her). Someone was obviously cruel to her, so she cringes if you try to pet her, flinches at loud noises, doesn’t come closer than a few feet away. We walk her and give her treats and talk to her constantly, and she’s learning (I hope) that we’re not going to hurt her, but she’s an odd dog, in terms of dogs, more like a cat than anything else.

In fact, I wrote a very irony-less poem about her, which I shall share and then you will leave me because you did not sign up for this newsletter for EARNEST POETRY ffs, let alone earnest poetry that isn’t even THAT GREAT* but which the writer insists on sharing with you anyway, but I’m just going to put it here and you can scroll past if you want, I won’t be hurt.

(*Seriously, I know it’s not that great because my prose is much better, but playing around with form is fun so I’m going to keep inflicting the occasional poem on you.)

I myself have owned a mix of big dogs and small ones: a good-natured slutty Indian dog called Doogie (after Doogie Howser MD), who was, oh god, constantly getting pregnant. This was the 90s, I’m not sure any of us knew about a spay/neuter programme for our own pets. Every now and then this large MCD van would roll up in a colony and cart away a whole truck-load of dogs, all of them howling and crying in the background, and I somehow got it in my head that they were all being taken away to be KILLED*. And this was tied up with the government-run neutering programme, so no one ever suggested actually fixing Doogie as a solution to our problems.

(*I’m not sure what they actually did with the dogs, come to think of it, but I think they were Trap-Neuter-Returning. The snappy acronym TNR among animal advocate circles.)

I always think of Indian dogs as wild and untrainable, but I realise in retrospect that this was probably because she wasn’t spayed, so she was constantly wandering off. We lived in a big government colony then, with a back door and a front door, and she was like this escape artist. No sooner had you corralled her into the house that she was sticking her long snout into the crack of the door (the doors were very old and didn’t close properly unless you put some force behind them when you locked up, which we didn’t, until nighttime) and running away. Sometimes, I’d be coming home from school or a friend’s house or whatever, and I’d see Doogie off in the distance and I’d shout, “Doooooogie!” and she’d come running up, just long enough to say hello and then dart off before I could grab her.

me and Doogie in the backyard.

Anyway, she had a whole fleet of puppies. At least two rounds, I think, fat, grub-like little creatures, who I was more delighted with than she was. She always let me hang out when she was giving birth, and nursing, so I saw The Miracle of Childbirth when I was about twelve, I think. They came out in these little grey sacs, which she would rip off with her teeth and eat, and then lick each puppy vigorously, which back then I thought was to clean them up, but which I now know was to get their blood circulating. And then, another would be born, and the same thing would happen, until she’d have a clutch of five or six, and they would squeak blindly, and grope their way to her nipples, or I would help, because I really thought they’d starve to death if I wasn’t there to carry them from their spot on the floor to where they could get food.

Of course, homing all the little fuckers was a bit of a problem. The Asian Age or the Pioneer used to run a pets section, where people advertised for pure breed puppies or mating requests or whatever. I thought I was quite smart about this, instead of saying, “Indie dog puppies” I said, “Mixed breed.” I added “adorable” and “healthy” for good measure, telling myself that Doogie was technically “mixed-breed” I just didn’t know which breeds those were. I got homes for all of them, using my amazing copywriting skills. One family sticks out clearly in my mind, they came to the house with a BASKET with a towel and a toy in it (everyone else had just been picking up the puppies and taking them away). I was a little awed that one of our puppies, Doogie’s and mine, these workaday, not-fancy puppies was going to such a posh home. They took the one I liked best, a friendly brown-and-white fellow that I called Bubblegum.

Several years and no spay or neuter later, our cocker spaniel mix (what my friend always called a Cocker Scandal) also had a thousand puppies, but we did not find such good homes for those guys, except one, a black fellow I called Turtle*. Turtle went to a friend of my mother’s and they named him Aloe and he lived a loved and healthy life. The others I lost track of, but the homes were not the precious amazing homes I wanted my puppies to have. I should’ve been more careful, but we were a little desperate: SO MANY PUPPIES. And no one wanted dogs anymore, suddenly.

*Cookie, being the least maternal dog in the world (though she loved sex. God, how much that dog loved sex. I mean, I know it’s only humans and bonobos who have sex for pleasure, but Cookie was really into it) squashed the puppy by deliberately lying down on him and I had to rescue him quickly, but his legs were always a bit splayed, so… Turtle.

They’re all dead now, my beloved dogs. Doogie died literally of being pregnant (she had a miscarriage and bled internally. It was quick, mercifully). Cookie died because she was old and her organs failed. Bobo, who I haven’t told you about, but he was the best, died at a grand old age, of snake bite on my grandfather’s farm, where he was relocated after we moved from our big house in Kerala to a tiny Delhi flat.

Sometimes I miss having a dog. But then, I look at how much work it is (K has been waking up at 6.30 every morning to walk Lily), and I’m like, “Nah.” I’m happy with our three cats, all spayed and neutered because I know to do that now, who are able to hang out without us in Delhi, the maid popping in once a day to check in on them. I’m happy with the occasional pet, the pet that doesn’t need me to train it or reward it, or look after its many needs apart from love and food and water and a warm place to sleep. Our cats don’t need psychological support, they’re cool being cats, they’re more confident in their space in the world than dogs. I’ve had dogs, many dogs, dogs I loved so much, but at this point, I am all cat person, and that’s okay.

Stuff I wrote this week:

My new Mythology for the Millennial column is about Ganga, and is very funny, so please read it.

Also went to stay at a boutique hotel a few weeks ago to preview it for Conde Nast Traveller, and that story is up too.

Short and sweet link list!

Crazy story of a girl who was STOLEN AT BIRTH and then meets her bio family by happenstance.

Laura Lippman (one of my favourite authors) on lost friendships (one of my favourite themes.) (Related: An old piece of writing I did on an ex-friend. )

I will link to any well-done story about a railway line but this story was gorgeous and includes tigers.

What it’s like to be a diver who brings up suicide victims in India.

And, one of the most popular users of Ashtanga yoga was a sexual harasser and all-round creep. (I had tweeted this story calling him the founder and people got more pissed off with that than they did with the sexual harassment itself and I think that sums up Twitter on the whole.) (Yes, I’ve got a Mastodon account.)

Have a great week!

xx

m

Where am I? The Internet Personified! A mostly weekly collection of things I did/thought/read/saw that week. 

Who are you? Meenakshi Reddy Madhavan, writer of internet words (and other things) author of seven books (support me by buying a book!) and general city-potter-er.

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