Chicken Run

Our houses in Agartala were surrounded by huge yards, conducive to raising animals and other farm like things. To this end we decided to adopt and raise chickens. We brought them home as chicks and as they grew, built a coop for them so that they could live in peace. Every evening our ‘man Friday’ would let them out for a walk around the yard and shut them back in. Once Lyka grew more familiar with the landscape she took upon herself to give the chickens exercise, lest they get fat and lazy. Lyka would charge at the birds at full speed, her tail waving madly, and a mischievous glint in her eye. You knew the chase was on when you heard terrified squawks emanating from outside the house. After several months of this chasing routine, one day Lyka finally managed to corner one of the birds near our compound wall. Now you must understand the bird imagined that this was the end, time to meet its maker. It had its head bowed, waiting for the inevitable. Lyka, whose DNA didn’t possess the genetic code for killing, was completely surprised at this turn of events. I don’t think she ever expected to catch one of the chickens, much less want to harm it. It was all about the chase for her. After standing there a while, looking a little puzzled, she sniffed at the chicken, gave it a lick and sauntered away, as if to say “what’s the fun if you’re going to stop running? Boring bird.” The chicken in the meantime must have died a thousand deaths and I’m sure was wobbly legged for days after this incident.

few of the 1000 odd pictures we have of her

Her tummy, a bottomless pit.

Lyka could tuck in an enormous amount of food and have nothing to show for it. She was never obese, as is the tendency with most Labs. She had perfected the art of making people feel guilty. She would eat an enormous meal and have a starved and piteous look an hour later.

She knew who the pushover was in the house and target them at tea time for biscuits or anything crunchy. The only time she EVER sat like a dog was during tea time, and dinner when there was chicken. She took up her position at a distance from the table where she had everyone in her line of vision, and looked at us unblinkingly, willing us to take pity on her and give her her all time favorite “Jim Jam.”

If we avoided looking at her, she would go below the table and look up at us from under the glass. She never let us forget that she was one of us and had equal, if not more, share in the cookie packet. I, of course, always succumbed.

Every evening after her meal she had this wonderful habit of thanking me for giving her her food. She did this by wiping her mouth on my clothes!

Lyka loved physical contact. Her theory was, "why have your hands free when they can be petting me?" There were times when she was very aggressive about it, pulling at our hands while we were seated. She used to subdue when given a warning. But then she'd start the whole process again, a few minutes later. Totally incorrigible!

Junk food and other edibles...

On Lyka’s second day home, in her initial forays into our backyard, she found an interesting creature that seemed to transport itself by hops and leaps. To the rest of us it’s known as a frog, to her it was some strange new critter that begged further investigation. She poked her nose at it and tried identifying its smell. When that didn’t work, she tried to lick the frog, determining whether it was food that she had not been exposed to yet. The frog in its panic at this giant fur ball invading its personal space gave off some kind of resin to protect itself. Apparently it’s fairly common. The minute that stuff touched Lyka’s tongue, she recoiled in shock and started making faces like the kind you do when you taste a pill in your mouth. And tried desperately to remove the taste of the frog from her tongue.

Unfortunately she seemed to have some kind of side effect to the chemicals in that resin, and began to froth at the mouth. We called our vet and demanded he come over immediately, even though it was well past office hours. When he arrived, I think Lyka had subsided a little. Our vet said there was no permanent damage and that the frothing would pass. Then he explained the mechanics of the frog and why Lyka was behaving the way she was. I don’t think she was ever enamored with jumping, hopping creatures ever again. Little did we know that this was but the beginning of her fascination for ‘junk’ food – and I mean real junk.

We started taking Lyka on walks around our colony and she would smell and explore every nook and cranny of the roadside with that eager, excited look that you can always identify a puppy by. When she thought we weren’t looking, she would also pick up cigarette butts and other assorted disgusting things from the road and happily munch away. As though she was being fed enough at home! A sharp reprimand would garner a guilty look from her but never broke her of her habit, until the last few years. There have been times where we had to forcibly make her spit out whatever garbage she had in her mouth.

The one time that she explored the world of cow dung (I’m not making this stuff up), she fell very ill with a gastro problem. For the next couple of weeks we would take turns feeding her barley water through a syringe dropper and crushing medicines into her food. Expecting her to swallow a pill on its on would only result in her giving it a cursory smell and have her walk away from the offending object. She eventually recovered.

It was only the beginning of her nine lives.

Catharsis

I guess in some ways this blog is inspired by Marley & Me. The book is, of course, brilliant and ironically something we all read about a month before Lyka passed. There were several moments in the books where we'd go "that's just like Lyka!" and others when we'd thank our stars Lyka was never as destructive as Marley.

We had often thought about documenting Lyka's antics. And there have been many. But I guess we would have never gotten around to putting this stuff down in writing unless we needed to. And this blog is really what we need right now. It may seem strange to many that we're so attached to our dog. To some she was just a pet. But we never saw a dog, we always saw Lyka. Exuberant, loving, dog smelling, fishy breath, hated baths, lunged at cats, ate all sorts of junk when she was a puppy and promptly get sick, shed enough fur to fill a pillow.

But we always saw Lyka.

Her big black eyes could melt any heart. Her ears, face, eyes, they were all a series of triangles, A caricaturist's delight.

This is years later but if Lyka couldn't be found pottering around the yard or sleeping somewhere in the house, you knew she was in the kitchen hoping something would come her way.

Of winter mornings and crashing doors

Her first night at home was traumatic - for her, she missed her mother dreadfully and cried through the night, for me because it was my first all nighter ever and I never imagined she wouldn't be overjoyed to be home with us. Even though we had decided it was important to teach her early on that she couldn't sleep on our beds at night, I dragged her basket into my room and kept her company that night.

Lyka was brought home just as winter was setting in for us in Tripura. Once she got over her initial homesickness and learned to trust us, to feed her and be nice to her, she started to explore the vast compound where our house was situated. We used to have a little drain running around the house that was meant to catch rain water. In her initial few days, Lyka's legs would never reach across and she would come to a screeching halt in the midst of an after meal run out of the house. She then learned the fine art of jumping and thereafter, there was no stopping her and her floppy ears that would bounce along happily.

My dad once brought home a chewable chocolate bone from one of his trips that Lyka promptly buried in our sandpit with glee, having accomplished something instinctive. It was different matter when her instincts never led her back to the buried bone, though she searched for it high and low, and looked completely puzzled at how it seemed to have just disappeared.

Winter mornings and exuberant puppies bursting with energy make for a deadly combination. Lyka had her own special way of waking me up. Once my parents were up and had let her out for her morning chores, she'd run back into the house and make a beeline to my room. We soon realized that it was prudent for my parents to give me a warning yell so that I could hang on to my blanket tight and prepare myself for the onslaught of affection ahead. I'd wait for the door to crash open and the bundle of golden fur to leap directly onto my bed. Within minutes my face would be covered with puppy drool and Lyka's ever shedding fur. I'd be reduced to incoherent giggles and she would be satisfied at having woken up her sister in a way that a true canine sibling should be. With a good morning's work behind, Lyka would then lope off my bed and saunter off in the direction of the kitchen, with her face saying "She's up! Now, where's my food?"

We did this for the two winters we were in Agartala.

Chapter 1

September 1994. That's where this story begins. An 11 year old curly haired only child (me, in case you hadn't already figured that out) had been standing on one foot about getting a puppy and had finally succeeded in convincing her parents that it may be an idea worth considering (I was told later it wasn't my brilliant persuasive skills that tipped the balance in my favor but my paralyzing fear of dogs, courtesy a dog bite at the age of 8). And off we went in a rickety old office ambassador to look at 'Bartala' Labrador pups. I remember being told that this was a pure window shopping exercise and that if we did pick out a puppy, it would have to wait till after my term exams were over for it to be brought home. Fate of course decided dogs were not to be brought into a family this way.

Upon arriving at the 'kennel' (being a large house with dogs and pups of all ages and sizes all over the place), we were asked to sit down and wait till the eligible pups were brought out for inspection. Ideally a puppy has to be 45 days old before it can really even be put up for adoption, because it hasn't yet been weaned from its mother. Anyone who's ever met a lab knows that asking it to curb its enthusiasm for strangers is like hoping for snow in Madras. The mother dog in question shot out into the sitting area and greeted with affection that only dogs are capable of. I have to admit I was a little take aback. Mothers are supposed to be dignified things, not wriggly dogs who slobber all over you. Then eligible pup number one shot into the room - Sunny, he was named. A yellow lab with a mad glint in his eye and cowlicks over his floppy ears, reminiscent of Dennis (of the Menace fame). I didn't immediately warm up to him - he had scratched me with his sharp puppy claws and I didn't imagine any dog of mine would be so boisterous (I was fairly painfully shy thing when I was young).

Then out came puppy two - Tina (creativity with names was obviously not the kennel's strong point). This little girl sauntered in quietly, taking her time to sniff everyone and categorizing them as friend or foe, wagging her tail a little uncertainly. After all who wants loads of strangers staring at you, determining whether you're fit to be in their family? And then she looked up at my mother and me. With her big melty brown eyes, it was love at first sight for us. My father still wasn't sure about bringing her home right away because I was 11 after all and getting me to study for exams after this momentous occasion would require some serious will power. But my mother and I prevailed!

We loaded 'Tina' into the car and I kept a tight grip on her. She was trembling from the strange noises and the strange sensation of being moved without actually walking on all fours. Once we got home, we had decided that first order of business was changing her name to something more respectable. I had gotten off an 'Aladdin' phase and wanted to name her Jasmine (ugh!). Thankfully we tossed around some more.

Enter Lyka.