Our street pet dogs

My Street pet dogs.

As I had written in my previous writeup, I never had a pet dog for myself. But that never dettered me from loving these furry beings and all the love that I could never give to a home pet I gave to the street dogs and called them my street pet dogs. And fortunately, my parents were supportive of this too as this took them off the hook to give me a pet.

There was Bhola. He ate all that we gave. We used to make extra chappatis to give him at night. And he had figured out how to let us know that he was hungry. He used to come and nudge the iron gate in the front of the house. The lock made a banging sound and that was our signal that Bhola had come. He got food at nearly all the houses in our lane but we were his go to house when he was hungry. We had to leave him behind when we changed houses.

Then there was Kalu, with a star on his forehead. We were his breakfast stop. He never came at any other time of the day, only early in the morning, somedays even when we were still not awake. Kalu would come and bark a low bark first to let ua know of his arrival. If we were late, the bark increased in both numbers and volume and turned into a howl if we did not acknowledge his presence. On hearing his bark if we responded with an "ashchi(coming in bengali)", then he would wait quietly or else the aforementioned result. One day we heard passersbys discussing him and how he howled to let us know. Sadly, one day he just stopped coming.

The latest was a family that actually adopted our street rather than the other way round. A daddy, mommy and their 7 puppies. Unfortunately though, only 3 of the puppies survived into adolescence and beyond(attaching pics). They used to just lie down in our front verandah of the ground floor or ran along with us when we were going somewhere or returning. At night they were our guarddogs and in the morning just came for food and cuddles. One day a street vendor raised his voice on my mother over some issue about the price of an item and the daddy dog came out of nowhere and just started growling at him. They received food from many of households but we also received backlash from many others. Since they were so many in number, their barking and their presence disturbed and frightened quite a few people. Quite a few of them, even some neighbours had threatened that they will poison the dogs. Well, eventually one by one, the dogs went away in search of other territories and only the mommy was left who was spayed by an NGO.

Over all these years I have had encounters with myriads of street pet dogs and each with their own unique traits and personalities are forever etched in my memory. Many left when they went in search of new territories, a few died of old age, some did not even make it to their adoloscence but I loved them with all my heart and they reciprocated with all their being. Although a conditional relationship regarding to food, their love was nonetheless unconditional like that of any other house dog. Their happiness on seeing me and the love they showered was by no means untrue. I don't know whether I will ever have a pet dog but for sure I will forever have a street pet dog wherever I go.