Buddy the Lab

“ Oh you brute you have dug up the lawn once again”, the all too familiar admonishment that our Labrador Retriever was being subjected to. He was at his tricks as usual digging up for some space where he can find solace in the lap of mother earth, which we city dwellers have denied him. You can’t blame him after all, that is his very nature, he is a retriever and has to literally dig things out. Anyway he has been at loggerheads with my better half ever since he arrived at our place, with cleanliness and hygiene as her mantras, a pet was always an anathema for her. She successfully warded off any attempts by me earlier. Like a well trained spouse I did not venture anywhere near a pet lest I might commit sacrilege and invite her wrath. “Hell hath no fury like a woman .....”

Kids of course are not dithered by any such pretensions. My daughter, the apple of our eye had been pestering us for quite a while. Eventually we had to give in when our son moved out to pursue his dreams after his high school and we relocated to the salubrious environs of Wellington. There was adequate peer pressure to put any other thoughts to rest, as every household boasted of pets, with some as many as three to four of them. So to keep up with the Jones I homed on to a Lab as it was supposed to be the friendliest of breeds and having consulted some friends of ours who were experts in canine matters. “Let sleeping dogs lie” goes the age old adage; throwing caution to the winds I am about to reignite the whole debate on Buddy our very own lab, christened so by who else but our dear Anu, my daughter . Well, he was all of 45 odd days but  a real bundle of energy, very playful and always up to some mischief. 

  The lady of the house ordained that he be kept in the garage, despite all our protestations and pleading that is exactly where he stayed all through our Wellington days with his entry within the precincts strictly prohibited. The poor thing had no choice but to get used to it. The advantage from his part was that he had the garden to himself which he ruined to his heart’s content, did not spare the lawn either with littering the place up with his sh*t all over, which even the safaiwalas refused to clean up. Finally we had to sacrifice one Sunday morning, forego my round of golf and instead wield the shovel to clean up the mess. It was of course quite a task to keep him from repeating it, by ensuring that he was taken out almost every two hours to prevent him from getting tempted at easing himself.

Dogs grow up real fast within six months he was almost the size of an adult, he had a delicate stomach, something which made him belong to us even more as even I have a very sensitive digestive system. He did not take to pedigree, well, actually that was quite a relief as pedigree costs quite a packet. So he had to be fed our normal diet, which is vegetarian, here the maternal instincts came to the fore, she was not going to deprive this child his chicken just because we were vegetarians at home. So a special Rice cooker was purchased and kept in the garage itself, where chicken was cooked for him by our sahayak and boy, he relished every bit of it. Buddy was blessed to have feasted on another exotic fruit which most people in India may not have even heard of leave alone eating it, Avocado!

We had a tree laden with avocado in the premises and there is only a finite quantity that we could consume including the delicious desserts which Preeti prepared with these avocados. I had relished them as salads only during my stint at Cote d’Ivoire during UN peacekeeping. So he got to play with them and have them when he got tired of playing.

Once we were raided by a group of simians, boy it was a sight Buddy getting terrified as these monkeys really had fun chasing him around, he turned tail and sought refuge in the garage. Wellington had plenty of wild life to offer, on yet another occasion, it was the turn of bisons who simply came and sat right at our gates, once again he got so scared that he simply refused to step out of his abode till the bisons decided to move on. There were snakes too and one such specimen was often around, we had to resort to planting some saplings of “Marwa mogra” in the four corners of the house, which act as repellents for these reptiles and thank God they seem to have worked as the visits then stopped.

His favourite pastime was to sneak out and land up at the Commandants house which was in the neighbourhood, which naturally had me worried lest the General take it amiss, especially as he owned the female species of lab. I wonder, if the offence then would have been “your dog stealing brother officers’ female dog’s affection”!! It was a quite a challenge getting him back from there with both me and my daughter as also my sahayak, all three of us trying to coax him and even resorting to bribing him by offering a generous dose of dog biscuits and bones. Once he decided to follow me to the college premises chasing me as I was in the car, I was oblivious of this my hapless better half along with the sahayak had to literally run after him lest he gets overrun in his playful enthusiasm and it took all their skills and stamina as also of the guards there to get hold of his collar and tie him up.

 Soon it was time to say adieu to Wellington and the huge mansion of a house that we made most of and we were circumspect about our luck as Secunderabad, where we were headed, we were not going to get any official accommodation, which naturally meant, moving into flats, as that is what the admissible HRA could provide us with. But this dog was lucky and we have to grant it to him, as we came across an elderly banker couple who were also dog lovers who rented their independent dwelling with adequate space around, to us once they got to know about Buddy. The beat part was that they were due to retire in Dec and were scheduled to shift into the premises themselves. But very generously they permitted us to stay there till Apr, when we were due out.

It was in Secunderabad that this guy had a freak out time, as he was still not permitted entry within, he stayed in the verandah near the staircase, from  where he would sneak out at night through the fence and chase the stray dogs and pigs, which we discovered when my son (when he was home for a holiday) heard him yelping in the middle of the night outside our gate. On one such occasion he even lost his bachelorhood subsequently. It was soon time for us to move on to Delhi, so we could not keep track of his progeny there....

I have always wondered what must a dog be thinking that is if they do that, when we move from one place to other, when we are separated for a few days, whether he will get to see us again, how long will we be gone and so on..... the answers were obvious at the joy expressed by his expressions, his wildly wagging tail and his hug whenever we get back after a short sojourn or vacation anywhere. It took a while in Delhi for his luck to brighten up again, as initially for about a month and a half, we had to stay in a two room temporary guest house and that too in a multi-storeyed building. He was definitely not comfortable there but the silver lining was that he had finally got an entry into the house as he could not be kept anywhere outside. He made the most of it by moving right under our bed and that is where he stayed ever since.  But soon we were allotted a two bed room hostel accommodation which thankfully was on ground floor. So he again had a full courtyard to himself to play around and laze around in the Sun.  

He is all of eight now, having accompanied me to Ranchi and back to Delhi, currently holed up in a flat again, quite frustrated as he often sneaks out keeping us on our toes.  There have been those occasional fracas with the strays here, on one occasion he even got the better of a German Shepherd in a “dog fight”, made me very proud, as it was the German Shepherd who pounced on him but he deftly manoeuvred and caught him, it took me , my daughter and a stranger to disentangle them. He was rewarded by a generous dose of dog biscuits for his quick reaction and reflexes. As I am keying this in, he is right here waiting for me to finish so that we can take post dinner stroll...........so I sign off!