On Dogs

Sanjana Hattotuwa-March 30, 2019, 5:13 pm 

"The better I get to know men, the more I find myself loving dogs."
– Charles De Gaulle

Ricky was my replacement, I think. At least when I was away in Delhi, during my undergraduate years. He was cross between a South African Ridgeback and stupid. I first met him just over a year old, when after a long journey back home, he proceeded to pee all over me. We put it down to excitement and the license given to a puppy to make a mess of everything, and yet be loved all the more for it. Over the next three years, my encounters with Ricky were for a month or two at most, every year. Each time I saw him he had grown, in size and general disobedience.

My parents had a cat when I was much smaller. It watched TV with us. Ambling along once a teledrama had started, it sat far too close to the TV to really see anything but proceeded to look left and right. What grabbed its attention remains a topic of conversation in the family to this day. That’s what pets do. They are an endless source of stories, laughter and laments. The cat died when I was too small to feel any sadness. I am told it is buried somewhere in the garden. The family maintains it was killed by an incompetent vet. The vet’s erstwhile house is still cursed silently when passed.

I am not entirely convinced, but never get in the way of its re-telling. Ricky I remember and am scarred by. For no discernible reason, the day after I had come back from surgery to remove my appendix, Ricky bit my hand, arm and leg. In that order. He was a strong dog, whose bark I discovered was as bad as his bite. A tooth of his missed a major vein by sheer luck. So in addition to an abdomen that felt like a bus had run over it, I was for the next several days like an Egyptian mummy – bandaged literally from hand to heel.

Not that Ricky cared. Knowing, partially and sporadically, he had done something that made the humans who fed him angry and sad, the dog tried to make amends by, first, looking sheepish and when that failed, moping. Eventually, this worked. Ricky never bit me again, or from his perspective, I never smelt like something he felt the need to bark at or bite. My father, Ricky’s permanent legal counsel, put it down the foreign smells from a hospital that set him off. My mother, who made the cardinal mistake of once feeding the mutt by hand when it was sick, had to then for the rest of the years he lived, feed him by hand.

This involved lovingly rolling small balls of rice, running behind Ricky in the back garden, prying open his mouth and shoving food down his throat. Just as I wasn’t there for his arrival, I wasn’t there for his passing. Unlike the cat before, I was glad I wasn’t. I can’t recall much from the time I did my Masters, nearly 15 years ago. I do recall the news that Ricky had died, and what I felt like for days after.

It’s been an absolutely crushing, long week, and for some reason, I have thought of the dogs in my life. In the mid-90s, when my sister’s father-in-law passed away suddenly, I recall the family dog who didn’t move from under the casket, until it was lifted. And then, it looked profoundly lost. Often in foreign countries, my encounters with dogs have been far more varied than ever violent. It goes against every fibre of my being to not get on all fours and pet sniffer dogs at airports. In Kabul, the sniffer dogs looked happier and better fed than their handlers. In Davos, the only St. Bernard I’ve seen, briefly, was in a park and on top of me. Second before, I had been immersed in a book under a tree. Again, I do not know what the dog saw me as, but the horrified owner with leash in hand was perhaps even more confused when I invited a second attack. This I almost immediately and very deeply regretted, because the dog, having in its mind put me down as entirely daft, proceeding to jump on me at full chat. Lomu, if alive, would have met his match.

In Brooklyn and Berlin, where dogs are welcome in restaurants, pubs and supermarkets, I’ve encountered dogs who have been better behaved than most children. In Nairobi, the plump, pitch black and deep brown Labradors of my hotel’s owner ritually greeted guests and accompanied them to their rooms, which in my case was a tree-house of sorts with a steep staircase. I found it hard to ascend, but the dogs, familiar with the steps and impatient with struggling guests, pushed their way through, sniffed around and then left after a thorough, vigorous petting which was demanded. This was repeated every morning, and I suspect, in all the rooms.

My son’s love of dogs is anchored to one household. There is story recounted and I suspect even a photo,of when he was around five, a deep, hushed conversation with Chloe – one of their dogs – under the kitchen table. My son hadn’t learnt to distinguish between dogs and humans, perceiving or treating one as he would the other. Chloe, for her part, had been entirely attentive and very patient with the small, talkative human. I recall when Chloe died, but my son was too young to comprehend.

But when Trinnie – an angelic Alsatian in the same household - passed away last year, both he and I were completely devastated, for days. We used to spend weekends with her dogs and three others, washing and brushing, feeding or being chased and eaten. The character, mentality and traits of dogs come through close, kinetic association. Both my son and I, in just that one household, spend more time on floors and all fours, heads buried amongst a blurred mass of paws and fur, than seated and talking as humans generally do.

Another friend and her husband, both completely mad in all the right ways, have more dogs and cats at home – all rescued – than I can ever keep track off. It is never short of an epic struggle to get myself and my son out of that house, with dogs and cats who range from the really strange to the certifiably mad, co-existing miraculously. And then there’s Boomer, an ageing Labrador who clearly came upon a single-digit age he liked and mentally stuck to it, resulting in behaviour associated with a puppy from a large, fat, uncoordinated, mad mastiff. Unsurprisingly, he made fast and firm friends with my son.

Perhaps because some of my best memories are around or with them,death often makes me think of dogs. The grief I feel when someone close dies is entirely indistinguishable from the profound
sadness I’ve felt after a dog I’ve known and loved has passed away. I have been followed by beautiful stray dogs, bitten by my own dog, pounced on by random dogs, humped on by friends’ dogs,
known many mad dogs and loved truly strange dogs who I strongly suspect may never have known they were what they were. I’ve cried so much after watching ‘Marley and Me’ on a flight, that the stewardess, visibly distressed, asked me if I was returning because of a sudden death in the family.

So much of what dogs are, I wish more humans were and possessed. Their short lives give meaning to our longer, and sometimes more pointless ones. I may be in a small minority of people who believe
that to be compared to a dog is high praise, and a rare compliment. Trying to make sense of the sudden death this week, I recalled Pamuk’s line from one of his better novels, on how dogs speak, but
only to those who know how to listen. Perhaps the best amongst us, are dogs in disguise. I would be perfectly fine with that.