ON MAN'S BEST FRIEND

My first pet was a Pomeranian gifted to me by a colleague. We named him Hector. Over the months he developed an ear for my wife’s school bus. As it rounded the campus block, he would dash for the gate, stick his paws and hid face through the grill and wait patiently for it to stop at the gate. He even learned to recognize the whirr of my scooter. When he was nine months old, we made the blunder of sending him away in a train's dog pound in mid -winter The trains rumbling and clatter must have rattled his ears and senses for he became listless, or was it he missed us as one would miss family. The only life and enthusiasm he showed was when some scooter passed by, hoping and expecting it was me. Days later when I went to retrieve him, I was told he had died three days before.

                Badi der se dar pe ankhen lagi thi,

               Bahut der kar di meharbaan aate aate

My second pet Lucky was also a Pomeranian, this time a gift from a grateful patient. She became singularly attached to me, so much so that I was the only member of the family she permitted near her when she had her first litter. I actually conducted her labor, my first after my undergraduate training. We gave away the others but held on to a male pup with a pure white coat and jet black eyes. My mother –in-law named him Snoopy.

Lucky became very sensitive to my commands. One winter morning when I took her out in the dark she stopped in her tracks, refusing to go ahead or allowing me to do so. As daylight occurred, I saw a five feet long black Cobra coiled up a few feet away from where we had stopped. We made her a bed, but she always slept on our bed at the foot end She has been long gone but, as I sleep, I can sometimes still feel the warmth of her body and her soft coat against my feet. Is it there only in the head or in the heart?

When she was ten years old she developed swelling in the udders The vets gave her a fifty- fifty chance after surgery, but being a surgeon, I prefer  better odds, and she wasn’t just a pet. A year later the swelling turned into a fungating malignancy. The vets offered to do a laparotomy with zero survival. I loved her better than this, and took the option to have her put to sleep. What haunts me even today is the look she gave me as I left her at the clinic.

Snoopy, meanwhile, had grown to a healthy dog. He retained his childhood appearance and demeanour, and developed a stately gait, all of which won him a prize at the Army Dog Show. He also grew a mean temper He took instant likes and dislikes to visitors, and never spared a nip at those he didn’t. This took such proportions that he came to be branded an “Aantankvadi”, a terrorist. He was especially fond of my daughter who was a year younger to him He would snap at any one who touched her against her will and would sit next to her cot while she slept, as if daring anyone to disturb her He loved rides in the car and I didn’t have to explain what happened to the sunscreens on the car windows We saw him gracefully age to thirteen years

When we went visiting to USA we had to leave him at a dog’s crèche run by a vet. On our return when I went back to pick him up, there were tears rolling down his eyes, They wet my shirt sleeve as I picked him up.I could barely hold back my own. My daughter and son were just awestruck.  How emotional can an animal and human being get! I vowed never to leave him like this again. Yet, eighteen months later, I broke my promise, and for the last time. He developed cataract and gradually lost the energy and will to move around. For a second time the vets gave me a Hobson’s choice, and we opted to have him put to sleep.

 I sometimes wonder are pet lovers like me compassionate about their pets to opt for euthanasia for them, or are they just turning their back on a ‘friendship’ that was becoming a liability. 

Unlike humans my pets would not have the will to fight it out, or would they?

 I love them far more than to let them and me find out.