Make the time

I don't consider myself an overly sentimental person, or sentimental at all really. There are a few things that do manage to wheedle through what I'm sure most people consider a stone like exterior and pets are one of them. I was never one of those people who cried through movies or books growing up. It's such a girly thing to do. But I wept on reading Call of the Wild and when that dog fell into the river in Far from Home, I went to go find Lyka to give her a hug.

So when I read this today, I got depressed as I usually do when I read about pets being abandoned. When I find out about people who commit what I consider a crime against animal kind, I'm very tempted to find them out and beat them to a pulp. It's unforgivable to get a pet and then not spend time with it, giving it the affection and attention it needs. Pets are not stuffed toys or decorations for the house. They're family. And people who think less than that should be barred from being let near animals. A lot of my friends have commented about how they're surprised that I haven't gotten a puppy yet, even though I'd love to have someone joyously waiting for me to come home. The answer is simply that I'm barely home, except for weekends. And the the guilt of not being able to spend time with my pet would eat me alive. Getting a pet is like having a child. It needs the same amount of commitment. If people aren't willing to put in that time and effort, it's not something they should even contemplate.

Marley & Me

Mom and I watched the movie a week back, fully expecting to be all tearful at the end. We liked the movie well enough. I think Owen Wilson and Jennifer Anniston have done a good job of bringing the characters to life in their understated performances but I think the movie didn't fully capture how completely mad Marley really was if the book is anything to go by. I mentally steeled myself for the ending, knowing what was in store. I thought mom would be more affected having actuually gone through the process but we found ourselves saddened but nothing more than that. I guess that is nothing more than conclusive proof that we have achieved closure on this one too. Look at us. We're growing up.

Nostalgia

Today I watched the trailer of Marley & Me for the first time. And all at once I had nostalgia hit me like a brick wall. I adored the book and though I know the movie will probably have some creative differences, I already love the look of it, particularly the bit that has Marley leap out the front window of the car and trot along side. Is it something that all dogs have programmed into their genetic coding? I hope the movie doesn't take a lifetime to release here!

Cold water

Lyka was a girl. So while she didn't feel the need to mark her territory everywhere, when heat season came around we had to watch her like a hawk and Dad would arm himself with a stick to ward off all potential suitors when taking her for walks. It usually never got very bad and we would make it through without any mishap. But we experienced a new and annoying phenomenon when we moved into our old house.

I was in class 10 at the time and it was exam season. My room on the first floor faced the road and I was in the habit of waking up at insane hours to study. So one night, soon after I'd gone to sleep, I heard loud barking right outside my window. When I woke up to find out what was causing the din, there was a line up of the male dogs of the colony outside our front door, yowling away. After some yelling at them, they went away only to return after a couple of hours. Clearly my method wasn't working. So I decided to throw cold water on their plans. Literally.

I got a mug full of water and poured it out the window on their heads. They didn't know what hit them and ran away. But they weren't to be deterred. Back for attempt three, I again gave them a free bath. And like this it continued for the rest of the night. Lyka had of course slept through the whole thing, blissfully unaware that I was muttering curses the next morning being bleary eyed and irritated at the lack of sleep.

The next night I was prepared. I placed a whole bucket of water next to my window and this time, drenched the canines right through. That seemed to teach them a lesson and they didn't return the next few days. But this little routine was to be repeated every time and by the time I left for college, I had perfected it down to an art.

Time heals?

It's been a year. And when I go home I still expect Lyka to stand outside the elevator door, looking expectantly at the new arrival to the house. And call me crazy, but there have been several instances when I've just felt her presence, particularly near our dining table :) We still talk about her and tell stories, which I'm sure people are sick of hearing about. But she was our resident entertainer. So I guess that's a hazard outsiders just have to live with. I was recently cleaning out my camera memory card and came across a whole bunch of pictures I'd forgotten I had from my last week at home before I moved to Bombay. And they mostly revolve around Lyka. I've stored them away to look at them another time. I'm sure wherever she is now, she's chasing chickens and wondering what on earth is taking us so long to come to her.

Memory Lane

It's been several months since I wrote on this blog. I've been caught up with the mundanities of my life and found more expression for my daily trials. But today I was flipping through some old pictures of home and family and Lyka features in so many of them. And I just stopped and realized that it's been nearly 9 months since she passed. A mini-lifetime has passed in between with many changes, but thinking about her at least once a day hasn't changed.

Strangely enough, the time I remember her everyday is on the way to work, when I pass some huts on the road that have goats tied up in front. I saw a man giving an animal a good scrub down and the goat was very patiently standing there waiting for the ordeal to be completed, probably thinking that the indignity of being bathed rivalled the ultimate fate that lays in wait for it. It only reminded me of Lyka and the fuss she would create everytime we gave her a bath which usually resulted in more water drenching us than soaking through her coat.

My parents and I have not had the courage still to visit her. I don't think we'll ever be able to. It's still too difficult. We prefer remeniscing over drinks and laughing over her antics. A lot of family is visiting this summer and I think it will be the first time they're coming over without Lyka in the house. A lot of new chapters have begun this past year but I don't think this is one is closed.

Fur Coat

For anyone who's ever had a lab, you know that while their fur is not very long, it is abundant and labs can shed enough fur to fill 3 pillowcases in your house. And Lyka was no exception. On the flipside you would also imagine that a canine with this thick an outer coat would be rather immune to an Indian winter and would look forward to crisp days. While Lyka would bound about with renewed energy during winter days, as a puppy she would shiver at night in Agartala winters. At first I thought covering her with a sheet would solve the problem and I would religiously tuck her in at night. Come morning, the blanket would have been thrown off in some corner of the house, having had little effect on Lyka. Then I decided I would fashion a sweater for her - I found a t-shirt that I had grown out of and painstakingly put Lyka's legs throught the arm holes and had her walking around in the dog-sized sweater for a while. I don't think she appreciated it much because she found a way to get it off after a few days. Then I decided she would fend for herself since I had run out of ideas.

Lyka was possibly the only dog in the world who would insist on spending hours out in the sun, even on the hottest and most humid of Madras summer days. I think this was her method of cleansing herself. She was also possibly the only fur coat possessing person who would feel cold if you left the a/c in your room on for too long. I know several dog owners give their canines haircuts in summer so the dog won't wilt in the heat, but I have a feeling that Lyka would have missed her coat even when she sat outside basking in the sunlight.

Orange Peels and Marmalade

Lyka's first winter with us was soon after she came home and at this time we still hadn't figured out what foods she would and would not eat. So in the course of our experiments, I sat down to peel an orange one day. Lyka being curious about this new edible came close to smell and categorize the fruit into "friend/foe." Now we all know how the orange peel has a habit of squirting and this usually hits someone's eyes with accuracy. In this case Lyka got caught squarely and I can only describe her reaction as complete shock that something round and generally characterless could sting so much. She backed away and watched me warily, thinking this was some form of punishment I had devised. That day forward, you couldn't bring Lyka within 3 feet of an orange and if you brought the peel anywhere near her face she would snarl (gently) and let you know orange were no joke to her.

9 lives

Lyka loved car rides - she would happily place herself strategically on the back seat so no one else could sit and watch the traffic and the world go by. She would also proceed to drool and shed fur all over the backseat which prompted us to stow a Lyka sheet in the boot of the car on a permanent basis. You'd always know if Lyka had been in the car. The window would be marked with her nose having been pressed against it and if you were wearing dark coloured clothes, you could be assured that you would walk away covered in fur.

When we first moved to Madras and moved into our apartment, we would have Lyka be dropped off at my grandmom's house in the morning so she could wander about the garden and I would pick her up on my way home from school. This was to let her get some sun and generally get acclamatized to living in the city.

On one fateful afternoon, Lyka had been loaded into the front seat by the driver and I was sitting in the back, with her leash in my hand. Lyka liked the window down so her ears would fly in the wind. We were half way home when we crossed a bullock cart (the kind that uses emaciated bulls and occuppies the whole road moving at a glacial speed). Lyka never liked cows - it's that whole dog in the manger thing I think. She started barking wildly at the poor bovine and got extremely agitated. I was trying to get her to calm down when all of a sudden she leapt out the car window and landed on the road. I have no idea what she was attempting to do - perhaps being on the same eye level with the bull emboldened her. The driver screeched to a halt, having lost a few hours of his life I'm sure, and I nearly had a heart attack. Now remember Lyka's leash was still in my hand. If we hadn't been moving at 2 kmph trying to overtake the cart, Lyka could have very easily snapped her neck. Having recovered from my shock, I got out, seething at the silly dog's idiocy, bundled up the canine and put her in the backseat with me, her collar firmly in hand and all windows rolled up. Lyka of course thought it was a brilliant change from the monotony of being driven home and seemed quite happy about the events that had passed.

We learned our lesson and after that day the car windows would be rolled down only enough to let Lyka smell the world. Fresh breeze could wait till we got home.

Resolutions

I recently saw ads on the TV for adoption of Indian dogs - the mixed breeds who're saved from the streets. While it's too soon to contemplate getting a dog, now or ever, I've decided if I ever get another dog it shall be from the pound.

Chasing kittens

As I was going to work yesterday I saw a cat perched on a wall, very studiously washing itself. And as always, I though of Lyka.

When Lyka was about 2 years old and at her bouncy and energetic best, she decided that her favorite pastime was to make all the colony cats' lives miserable by lunging at them. There was this one morning where a kitten, who I'm certain was making its first foray out into the world having told its mother that it can take care of itself and it just wants to explore, wandered onto our front yard. Lyka, who was outside dutifully sniffing every corner of the house making sure nothing had changed in 12 hours, detected the slight movement and stopped still in her tracks. In such moments she often resembled one of large cats you watch on the Discovery channel who are getting ready to pounce on their prey. She crouched down and watched the kitten make its way daintily across our lawn. Now this little cat being completely unaware that there's a concept called dogs, was happily pawing at things and looking around. This was the moment Lyka decided to strike. Galloping full speed at the kitten, barking her sonorous barks, tail wagging madly in the air, I'm sure from the kitten's perspective Lyka looked like some kind of nightmarish monster. It ran to the nearest tree and somehow managed to climb up to the top branch and sat there, quivering and thanking its stars.

Lyka not having anticipated this, stopped short at the tree. She thought she would give the kitten a good chase around our yard till she got bored but this animal climbing a tree was unheard of. She looked up at the tree, very puzzled, as if to say "huh?? how come you can climb?" So she sat down, waiting patiently for the kitten to come down. The kitten of course had no intention of moving until this dog had been safely removed from its vicinity. Now I of course had been watching this entire proceeding and found the whole spectacle very amusing (I was 11 so don't judge me). But I decided to cut the kitten a break and took Lyka's leash, clamped it on her and somehow managed to drag her back into the house. She didn't like this one bit. I had ruined her fun.

The kitten noticed this turn of events and decided to slowly makes it way down. There was one problem though. It had no clue how to come down from the tree. When you're running for your life, I suppose some instincts kick in and climbing up a tree happens unconsciously. But coming back down is a whole different ball game. After much hemming and hawing and a few hours, the kitten managed to land on terra firma. Lyka by this time had lost interest and was fast asleep. But by some quirk of fate, she chose that exact moment to wake up and caught sight of the kitten again. Unfortunately I was too slow to stop her and off she went bounding in the kitten's direction and the kitten went straight back up that tree. It took about 15 min for me to stop laughing.

When that kitten finally made its way home that evening, it would have had an incredible story to tell.

Odds & ends

A life less ordinary

My tryst with dogs started at the age of seven. My grandmother was walking me home from the bus stop and as we were making our way through the alleys, a stray ran up and cuffed my leg. In my panic, not realizing that the dog hadn't actually broken skin, I shrieked and the dog ran for cover. But that was enough to put me off all canines for a very long time. Large, full grown ones at least. If I spotted a dog even 5 km away, I would promptly head in the opposite direction.

Then we had Lyka and I couldn't imagine ever being scared of dogs now. Having a dog brings you into this club of people - when we spot other dog owners on the road, we automatically smile at each other and look on fondly as the canines trot along happily smelling every nook and cranny of the road. Before Lyka, we may have liked animals, but not empathized with them. You never really realize how difficult it is for animals to communicate but how much they manage to tell you by just being themselves. Lyka, for instance, would lunge at stray dogs on the road, not out of aggression but mere playfulness. But being as large as she was, she would scare the daylights of the dog on the receiving end of one of her playful gestures. On the other hand, she was an absolute lamb around small children, knowing, even as a puppy, not to jump all over them and scare them. She would wait patiently as they would pull and poke and prod at her tail and coat.

My parents and I have often had this discussion and we have often wondered if we would be the people we are today had it not been for Lyka. I like to believe that having Lyka in our lives has made us better human beings.

A window to the world

One of Lyka's favorite pastimes in our house was to stare out the little cut outs in our balcony, at the general state of affairs on the road below and the sea beyond. On a particularly windy day, Lyka's ears would be buffeted by the wind and she would calmly watch the goings on of the world outside.

A well bred canine on her queen sized bed

Call it an academic debate if you will, but my parents and I have often wondered if Lyka was a pure lab. After she grew to her full size, Lyka was still shorter than several labs around the block and had much sharper features that we had expected her to. Most labs are pug nosed but Lyka had a full snout, not shortened by her genes. And a subject that was a particular favorite of ours - her sharp ears. We liked to believe that Lyka often bore resemblance to a rabbit, especially when she would be fast asleep on her custom made bed. Her ears would be be pointed outwards, in sharp relief to the rest of her.

Lyka could often be found lying on her back, lost in dreamworld, with her paws sticking up into the air. Given a choice to sleep in my parents' room with the a/c on and her bed, Lyka would inevitably chose her bed. And we recently discovered why the choice was obvious, given that we live in Madras, which only has one kind of weather and Lyka had the small problem of being saddled with a fur coat all year round. My parents got Lyka's bed refurbished about a month back, and we've kept her old mattress, as extra seating in our house. You can sink into that bed and never want to get up. That's why till the very end, Lyka always preferred to sleep on her bed.

Our doggy deserved nothing but the best.

Playtime

As Lyka got older, her exuberance for life mellowed down and day to day things stopped evoking extreme reactions. But every once in a while she would decide it's play time and go completely crazy - tugging on her leash, running around in mad circles and digging large holes for no particular purpose. She would be covered in sand at the end of the exercise and look extremely pleased with herself on a good day's work.

The dog who hated water

Atypical for a lab, Lyka hated being bathed or being anywhere near water. We would have to bribe her with biscuits to get her to the terrance to be bathed. After enduring the indignity of being scrubbed, she would ignore the biscuits we would give her afterwards as a peace offering and sulk the whole day.

But it was all worth it to see her fluffy and clean and have her fur curl up into ringlets, very much like the family she came from.

Pondering

It's been a mini lifetime since the last post, but not for want of stories, just time. However, as diwali time approaches and I hear the fireworks outside, I can't help but think of Lyka.

Lyka, like a lot of dogs around this time of year, was miserable during diwali. One can hardly blame her. If you had the capacity to hear frequencies unknown to man and then have everything you hear multiplied times three, a sharp blast every so often would probably jar every nerve in your body as well, not to mention, give you a splitting headache. I know the rows of firecrackers that seem never ending send me looking for the nearest paracetamol strip. The entire time that firecrackers were being set off, Lyka wouldn't leave our side, lest the booming noise consume her. She was certain that as long as one of us was around to reassure her and keep a hand permanently placed on her, she couldn't be harmed. Or if she wasn't to be found, Lyka would be hiding in the bathroom - though I'm not quite sure the acoustics of any bathroom are suitable for reducing echoes.

Lyka hated any form of loud noise actually. Thunder, loud bangs at any point in time, anything that jarred her delicate sense of peace really. And woe betide the person/thing that shook her awake, she would bark till her objection was well and noted. We would, of course, have to wait it out until her indignation subsided.

They say though that animals are afraid of fire. Strangely enough, everytime my grandmother would take an 'aarti' of the family, Lyka would be front and center, watching the flame go round and round. And also be the recipient of the 'teeka' that's supposed to keep the evil spirits away.

With no Lyka insisting on continuous physical contact, covering our clothes in her golden fur or us stumbling on her in the middle of the night when you go to brush your teeth, this diwali will certainly seem empty.

A death defying feat

When we moved to Madras, we moved into govt. housing, which was a fairly decent sized apartment. While it was no big deal for us, Lyka found the whole concept of an apartment puzzling - there was no access to anything resembling a garden, no place to stretch out and soak in the sun, nothing. And to top it all off, we would disappear for long periods in the day for school and work, leaving her locked inside. Let's just say, she was not happy about this arrangement and took a while to come to terms with it.

Moving into a cramped space also meant that we now had to take a decision on whether or not we wanted Lyka to breed. While I loved the idea of lab puppies running amok in the house and then putting them for sale, my parents decided it wasn't practical. One, we didn't have the space and two, being the softies we are, there would have been no way in which we would have had the heart to put little furry golden colored animals on sale. That being said, we decided it was best to get Lyka spayed. So off we went to Blue Cross and picked up Lyka a couple of days later, post the procedure.

Initially Lyka seemed none the worse for the wear. She had stitches that took time to heal but that was all. Then we started noticing that Lyka's beautifully triangular face no longer seemed normal - her facial muscles were seizing up and her eyes looked unfocused. Soon she started to bump into things and started having seizures. Our vet said that when dogs are usually operated on, they're not given a tetanus shot because they have a very high threshold for infection. However, Lyka seemed to have gotten tetanus nonetheless, usually a death toll for any animal. But we wouldn't give up.

We took Lyka to the vet hospital everyday where she would be injected with various things and put on IVs. Then we'd bring her back every evening and sit with her, coaxing her to eat through a dropper and hold her tight when she'd have seizures so she wouldn't hurt herself. Things seemed bleak for a while and the infection took the better part of a month to pass, but I don't think there was any point at which we didn't believe that she would make a full recovery. There was no question of Lyka not being around.

Finally, after extensive visits to the vet, she started to improve. Her doc was very surprised and apparently wrote a medical article chronicling her whole sickness. We were told Lyka was one of maybe 10 dogs in the country who had survived tetanus. Eventually, her facial muscles relaxed and she looked like the happy dog she was and she stopped bumping into things. We like to think that apart from the extensive medication she was on, our positive vibes had a lot to do with her recovery.

Human Nature

Have you ever wondered how difficult it would be to express yourself without being able to use words? What if all you had was your face and a desire to be around people all the time?

In our last house in Agartala, we had a front patio bounded by a short wall. By the time Lyka grew to her full height, she was able to rest her head on the wall and watch the world go by. If we'd go out, Lyka would await our return on the patio, with only her triangle face and raisin like eyes visible above the wall. Her face would be absolutely immobile and would stare at us beadily till we got to the front door. Till such time she would assess us and determine whether we were planning to abandon her once again and leave for distant parts.

When we moved into our current house, Lyka investigated the whole place thoroughly and demarcated all 'her' places. When we sat upstairs watching TV, she would heave herself up and pad her way up the stairs. We always knew she was coming by the clicking of her claws on the marble. After dinner she would automatically go up to the TV room and await our arrival. If we didn't show in sometime, she would come out on to the landing and look at us questioningly, wondering why on earth we were taking so long, when family time was supposed to have started long ago.

In some ways Lyka was more eloquent than any person we've met. She would express her pleasure with a wide doggy smile and a thumping tail that had the power to sweep things off a table and whack your shins till they were 'black n blue.' If she was depressed she would refuse to eat. If she was concerned about anyone of us being upset or ill, she would spend the whole day by our side, not asking for anything, making sure we knew that she was around if we needed her. Just her presence sometimes would make all the difference in the world. All she asked for in return was our company. Her brand of unconditional love is hard to come by.