Named Dogs

Post 99 of 100… I am so close to the end of this part of my 100 Dogs of India project, but still with so many more dogs to share and write about!

When I chose the images of dogs for this project I picked through all of them from the four trips I have made to India over the past 9 years. Some dog images were stronger than others, and a few of the dogs had clear links to stories that I wanted to tell, so I used their photographs. I still have dozens and dozens more on my computer but, I promise, I will let you see them too in good time. Some of them may even make it into the book I want to make from this project.

As this is the penultimate post I have decided to share a final few dogs that belong to an important and welcoming subset of Indian desi dogs — they have all been given a name. Giving an animal a name is, I think, the first step towards caring for it. You saw the animal walking around the streets but you didn’t just ignore it and continue about your day. You stopped and noticed that particular creature long enough for it to nestle into just a tiny space in your thoughts. You hoped to keep seeing it each day, and so you wanted it to be as comfortable as you could reasonably make it. You named it and took care of it.

Of course, a couple of these dogs have gone well beyond being street dogs with names. They are fully-incorporated into the household and live as happy a life as my own dog Chip. The dog in the main photograph at the start of this post is Bella. She belongs to the owner of the Shree cafe in Varanasi. When he is upstairs, she is upstairs. When he comes down she comes down too and spends her day sniffing people’s faces as they walk down the very narrow lane.

I got the sense that the owner gets irritated buy the excessive pedestrian traffic blocking the way to his cafe (the path leads to the famous Golden Temple) and makes absolutely no effort to stop Bella leaning out and engaging with folk who were not all that happy about having a large Alsatian’s nose in their hair (the window is about head-height).

I discovered Blackie (above) when I was on the hunt for Idli. Blackie lives outside a kebab shop on the opposite corner to Idli’s territory. The owner told me he puts down water and scraps of food for her each day.

Chikki belongs to a small group of security guards in the affluent Delhi suburb of Hauz Khas. They were playing cards in a bush behind a gate and Chikki, in his brightly-coloured jacket, was left to do the actual guarding. Chikki was a slightly confusing dog. I was kneeling down on the floor and he trotted over, put his feet on my thighs and sniffed my face with his tail wagging excitedly. He looked very happy, but when I put my hand out slowly to give him a stroke he gave me a gentle nip on the fingers. He is the only dog in India to have ever done that, usually because I rarely interact with the dogs unless I am as certain as I can be that they are friendly and actually want my attention. Incidentally — he loved my wife Fiona and was more than happy to get a stroke from her.

Kushi belonged to a lovely lady who had set up a nice little coffee shop just next to our apartment in Varanasi. We saw her, and Kushi, every single day but regrettably never bought a coffee from her because it was always the wrong time. Kushi seemed to have more clothes than I did. I didn’t get a chance to ask her where Kushi came from, but it is safe to say that she wasn’t rescued off of the mean streets of Varanasi.

I don’t know what became of Sophie. I hope somebody found her and returned her to her owners.

Moti belongs to this security guard outside Lokayata art gallery in Hauz Khas. The guard had placed a bowl of water down for it and Moti had a little pile of food there whenever he wanted it.

Julia was never there in the daytime, but as we left our hotel in Bangalore each evening to go and have dinner she had magically appeared on the front steps. I spoke to the receptionist, who was working at this hotel to learn how to run the hotel he had just bought to run by himself in distant Gujarat, and he told me that Julia doesn’t belong to anyone. Each night the security guard precariously balances her bed on the steps and gives her some dinner. Apparently she will sleep on that step whether or not the bed is there, so they just let her stay there.

If you’d like to read a little more about Indian street dogs (or ex-street dogs perhaps) with names then you may like the story I wrote about Kalu — the first Indian dog I met that had a name. I know that lots of them probably have names, but Kalu was the first, and the one that got me thinking more about the significance of having a name. Another encouraging story is the one about Tony Slice - the dog who was adopted by a pizza restaurant.

If you have read most of my posts you may have noticed that many of the street dogs have been informally adopted by the numerous guards that watch over various places. It was, in fact, quite rare to see a guard who didn’t have a street dog close by. This could be a great project for the future I think!