The adorable buffoon.

Describe a decision you made in the past that helped you learn or grow.

Tara jumped into our lives when I was at the peak of my teenage rebellion years. I chose to bring her home and because of that, I could not walk out on her. Every time I used to get angry, I used to walk up to the terrace and sit and there she would be, eager to sit and cuddle with me.

Dad insisted that Tara had to reproduce, and we went through the entire process of finding a mate and doing the deed. I had no idea about gestation in dogs and assumed it would be just as long for dogs as it was for humans, so around the 60-day mark, when she started to nest and dig burrows in the yard, I was forced to contact the breeder for more information. With the information that we received, we realized that we had less than a week for the puppies to arrive and had absolutely nothing ready to welcome them.

Luckily the tenants living in the ground floor house had just vacated the house and we had not yet found a new tenant. So, we decided to use that space as a temporary whelping space which would give Tara ample space to walk around during the process. Convincing Mum and Aunty took some time, but we managed to get the permissions. Tara was supposed to whelp around February 8^th, but she decided to go into labor the evening before – Mum’s birthday. We had organized a cake and had an impromptu birthday for Mum when Tara kept running into the yard and the burrows she had dug out. After the cake, when Dad went to the yard for a smoke, he heard Tara keening in pain and he asked me to take her into the house, and then call the breeder to check again. After leaving Tara indoors, I called the breeder and, on his confirmation, quickly picked out a couple of old and soft bedsheets and cut them up. Dad started bringing down newspapers. And we had a couple of those foldable mobile cots that we brought down to use.  

My plan that night was to watch the Sunday Movie of the Month on Star Movies – “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kids”. But Tara had decided otherwise, and I was squatting patiently next to her while she hunched and grunted out six pups one after the other, in 30 to 45-minute intervals. I would pick them off the floor when they fell off and encourage Tara to lick and clean off the placenta and then take them and wipe them on the cloth and hand them over to the younger sibling, who was my assistant in this process. Dad and Mum stood nervously outside the house, taking turns to alternately peep through the window with words of encouragement to Tara, the sibling, and myself. The process started around 9 pm and went on till midnight. At that time, Mum decided to call it a night, she was exhausted and still had a full day of work the following morning. But Dad, hung around for a bit. Tara was exhausted and had sat down to rest. Assuming that was it, he also headed back home to sleep. It was just the sibling and me, downstairs with Tara and her pups.

So, my sibling and I decided to take turns to keep an eye on the pups. Tara belonged to a litter of three pups and her exhausted mum had slept on one of them and the other had died soon after birth. Tara was the only survivor and we had decided when she had gotten pregnant that we would ensure all her pups would survive. The sibling said she would take the first watch, so I just opened the mattress and crashed out. Tara decided to move out of the room and slept in the other room. The sibling sat around, watching her and roughly an hour later, woke me up in a panic. “T, wake up, Tara is hunching again. It’s been an hour since the last one, and she has pushed out something white and bloody.” Groggy I woke to find, that Tara, had indeed pushed out her final pup, a golden yellow Labrador in the early morning hours of 8^th February.

Smiling, I wiped the pup clean and handed it to her. It was her turn to rest, so I let her sit with the pup while I went to cuddle with Tara. Tara and I had slept on the floor on many occasions, and I knew her to be a comfortable cuddle bug. It was only later the following morning when Mum came down to visit, that I registered the yellow Labrador. The entire liter was black and there was just one yellow. Mum gravitated to the yellow and that’s when I knew that he would be with us forever. Mum insisted that she did not like dogs, and I had no reason to dispute it. I asked her then that if she would agree to keep him, then I would train him and ensure he would be as housebroken as Tara was. When she agreed, I put the effort into his training.

I was not a veterinarian. I was not a certified dog trainer either. I was just a teenager with very little patience. I was bluffing and Mum was generous enough to accept it. And that’s how we became the proud owners of a humungous yellow Labrador pup, that never grew up. As the pup to come out last and as part of the litter that ensured I did not get to see my Sunday special, he was named Butch. It was the tiny things, the little stuff that they did as pups and eventually as grown dogs that taught me to appreciate and enjoy the little things in life. Butch probably landed on his head because he was the craziest pup I ever saw. As a pup, when he was just a few weeks old and had started having Cerelac (This was the closest we came to baby food when he was a pup, Pedigree had not yet gotten into the market) from a plate, he would eat so much, that his feet would not support him, watching him attempt to walk, and then flop on his belly was stupendously entertaining. But he was an obedient dog, a good-looking dog. He used to heel when walking on his leash. He had a good recall. And he used to love to fetch. Anything from a twig to a tennis ball, to the Castrol 2T Oil boxes that mum used to change the oil in her bike- Butch has played with them all. He used to jump up and levitate with all four feet in the air. He was always happy to see us. I don’t know if he knew he was a dog, but we sure forgot he was one soon after he was born. The dogs were so much a part of our lives, that we never considered going on vacations without them. We did not even know what that was or that maybe we were missing something. He taught me to be patient. He taught me to laugh. He used to crap in circles and sometimes would pee sitting down. But with all the buffoonery he was majestic. Especially after a bath, when we removed the collar and wiped him, his coat was glossy and his shoulders brushed. Watching him amble at my heel, I’ve had many a stranger stop by for a conversation. Butch and Tara were my people meter, if they did not growl at you, then I would consider spending time with you. They taught me fear when they growled, and their hackles rose. They never bit or snapped at any of us, so I’ve always believed that dogs never bite. Bathing them was a chore I was always happy to delegate. And here, gravity always worked, the younger sibling won this coupon every time. Raising Tara and then Butch prepared me a lot more than I care to admit to raising the kids. I never yelled to call them, either Tara and Butch or the kids, I always whistled, and they’ve all responded.