One wet summer day some three years ago, just around this time of the year, a litter of pups were born in a secreted corner of the street behind our house in Hyderabad. Pariah even before they were born, like thousands of our Indian street pups…..
Little did we know that one special pup from that litter was destined to touch our lives like we had never imagined.
Shadow – our special boy born a pariah pup and now the most precious, most fiercely loved and adored dog in our household turns three today!
HAPPY BIRTHDAY, my Darling Angel. It was a blessed day when you were born.
(Shadow’s first walk the day after he came home)
My original little doll girl, my sweetheart pup, my first real dog Ginger is seven today.
How time flies!
It seems like just the other day that we picked up this cuddly, highly energetic, unutterably cute little girl in the dead of the night from our neighbour’s place. They didn’t want her, they said. She and her brother were being kept in one of their balconies, eating sleeping, peeing and pooping and playing right there because they had no time to take care of them.
They would try keep the boy but they were giving away the girl. Quick to remind us that she was a very special girl born to a ‘Best in Show’ mother and a highly honoured Police dog father, pedigreed carefully, a British lineage fit- for- show pup.
Alright!! Point taken! We paid and Ginger came home to live with us that night at almost midnight hours.
Shaking at the knees, doleful liquid eyes opened wide at this sudden change and separation from her sibling, stinking of poop n pee this little two and half months old fur bundle was just too cute for words!!
We settled her just outside the bedroom imagining she would sleep a tired sleep till the next morning when we could clean her up. She didn’t lose a minute in howling away to glory in full throated protest!!
A quick bath – she seemed to enjoy it – and a careful drying effort later she snuggled close and fell promptly asleep. It was 2 A.M. and the two of us were still trying to get a hang of this new addition to our lives while Ginger slept a dead sleep under the blankets, like that is what she had been doing all her life!
Little did I know that night that I had found my heart dog, my Velcro dog, my soul dog.
I have had dogs all my life but Ginger is my first real dog. Not my parents, not my brother, not any care-taker…it has always been I and P who have been taking care of her ever since that night.
She has been in both our lives ever since we have been together so she has literally grown with us. She made our little family complete long before Shadow and Buddy came along.
More than that it didn’t take me long to realise that Ginger was my dog…my soul dog. Once in a while your life is touched by a dog who seems connected to you in such a way it is beyond fathomable.
Ginger knows me like no one else. Often I find her reading my thoughts…like she would get up and be ready to get out of a room the moment I think about it, even before I’d move a muscle. She understands every letter, every word that we speak, every emotion, every mood that we do not say out loud and speaks so eloquently in her own way that I am sometimes overwhelmed by it all.
Her eyes, the wag of her tail, the tilt of her head, the way she takes my hand or my skirt in her mouth to take me where she wants me to go….there’s an entire language she speaks.
Utterly cuddly still at seven years but equally headstrong, gentle yet extremely strong willed, finicky (she’d demand a bath after her walks and go sit in the bathroom) yet capable of digging the deepest holes if she fancies, it takes me a while to accept that my little girl is actually a grown girl now.
When I look at the traces of grey on her muzzle, the whites on her eye brows and at the tip of her tail my heart gives a lurch….
HAPPY BIRTHDAY, My Gin- Gin girl. I don’t really need to say anything, do I ?
You know. Like always…..
