Dogged

Lately my life (and hence my blog) has been all about dogs. Either I am tainted with a fear-of-dog pheromone because of the one incident or I need to change my detergent!

Yesterday I was coming home with a bag of bananas (yes, they were for me and no, I have no monkeys at home) and I noticed a really huge dog (the alsatian kind) coming towards me. I had two choices – panic or face my fear and I foolishly decided on the latter. The dog came close and started licking the banana bag. It doesn’t sound too bad right ? Hang on…I was holding the plastic bag next to my tummy since the strap had broken loose and I had a mongrel with its tongue licking that bag!! I was wearing thin cotton pants and so if it chose my skin instead of the bananas, I was going to be in big big trouble.

Since someone told me that dogs can smell fear, I tried to pretend that it wasn’t bothering me and I was just frozen to the spot (I have new found respect for those who act in Ramanarayanan movies). I was playing the don’t-move-play-dead-when-a-bear-sniffs-you part to perfection. And then I finally found what I was looking for, the “§%$§&$§&@ owner of the dog. This lady coolly came around the corner and she seemed to be in no hurry to call the dog away. I gave her a desperate look since I was too afraid to shout and then the dumb head finally understood I was uncomfortable and called off the dog. Needless to say, I threw the bananas away!

Question to dog owners: Would you be ok if my kid came and licked your ice cream?

For heaven's sake, take responsibility for your pets and for the last (swearing) time, keep your dogs away from me !! Don’t force me to use the pepper spray!!

For those who noticed and want to comment about it: I know pheromones only trigger responses from members of the same species.

The day I got mauled...

....by a dog, would be today, the 25th of April, 2010 at precisely 5:48 pm while I was walking in the Theresienwiese, enjoying the weather and minding my own business...or at least that's what I thought....

I have always stayed away from dogs and when people asked me if I had had a bad experience, I would answer in the negative. That changed today. I actually just wrote a post about my relationship with animals - can dogs actually read or is this some weird jinx factor that I have aroused ?

Sunday with good weather means runners, children and above all dogs catching balls, running around, playing frisbee and simply basking in the sun with their owners. As I was humming ''Guzarish'' and walking along, a ''brilliant'' dog owner threw a ball towards the pedestrian path and I saw a tiny mean looking dog (don't know what kind) running towards it.

As luck would have it, it caught the ball just a feet away from me. I mustered all my courage and started walking away as if the dog wasn't there. Either it liked me or my shoes. It came towards my feet and my heart beat rose. I said loud enough for the owner to hear ''Ich habe Angst für Hunde'' (I am scared of dogs) and I don't know if he responded because by then I was focussing my attention on the dog that sniffed/licked my shoes and I said ''Aiyyo''....the dog probably understood Thamizh and it responded my jumping on me and I screamed !!

The dog jumped on me again and started biting my skirt (I was so glad I wore a long flowing skirt with layers instead of pants) and I am now in tug-of-war for my favorite skirt with the dog's teeth and all the while I am screaming my head off...I don't know how long this lasted, probably about 10 seconds but it seemed like an eternity to me. Finally the owner manages to tear the dog off my skirt and says ''sorry'' and walks away as if he just bumped into me !!!

There I am in the middle of a large ground, with a torn skirt, completely shook up, scared, embarassed with tears welling up in my eyes. I managed to pull myself together and started walking home (it was at least 1 km away) and I start wondering at how irresponsible the dog owner was and how I should have made him pay for the skirt !! I was also wondering about how no one in the whole place even offered to comfort me with a perfunctory ''are you ok'' !

I was hurrying to get home when I notice another dog running towards me and while I am thinking how in the world I am going to muster strength to deal with it, a Turkish guy stopped me, held my hand and said ''don't move'', the dog came, smelled me and left. He then says he saw the whole episode and he was shocked at the dog owner's behaviour and that I should go home and make sure that the dog did not actually make skin contact. Finally before leaving, he tells me ''never let a dog know you are scared''...I made a mental note to remember it but then its a whole other issue when you actually have to do it, right ?

I came home, took a dettol-shower (yup, I still use dettol!) and was relieved to find there were no teeth marks anywhere. I looked at my torn skirt and I remembered what my appa used to say whenever I bought any ragged looking, faded clothes in the name of fashion - ''ennadhu idhu, nai pidingina madhri irukku?''....for once, its actually true !!

I am a vegetarian and I have never knowingly hurt an animal but if it has to stay that way, all you pet owners out there, for God's sake, keep your pets to yourself !!!!

Its a dog's life....

...I finally have internet at home, the weather is great and I have not cooked for the last 3 days because of the numerous lunch/dinner invites I had…and you wonder why I call it a dog’s life….did I mention I was referring to a dog or dogs in Germany, dogs who sleep in mattresses that are most likely expensive than mine, with a choice of dog food that occupies a larger space than my cereal aisle in supermarkets and a selection of cat toys to play with (I have no similar analogy here since I am not one of those stuffed-toy-hugging-cho-chweet-saying girls).

I have never been an animal lover and I never will be. Lets say I have an I-stay-here-and-you-stay-there relationship with all animals. I always maintain a safe distance from all of them be it a cow or a bunny or a bull dog. I don’t pet them or ooh-aah at them but neither do I throw stones, I just mind my own business but that is very difficult to do in a place like Germany where you see more dogs than children.

It was my first month in Germany. I was in the bus and a man comes and sits across me. All was well until I suddenly saw his chest move, he was directly in front of me and I was totally psyched when I saw it. His chest still kept moving and while I was wondering if it was one of the WWF-Lex-Luger stunts (remember how he had those full size mirrors on the stage?), a tiny head came out of his jacket and my heart almost stopped. Only when I realized that it was his teeny tiny dog and he chose to keep it warm this way, my breathing became regular.

The concept of pets and the importance (exaggerated, in my view) given to them used to surprise me on a monthly or rather weekly basis, when I first came here. I have gaped at cat toys, chew toys for dogs, mouse toys for cats and even small trees that cats can climb! Then I learnt about all the vitamins and vaccines they needed. Then I saw the dog collars and bells that they used during different times of the day (the ones at night had a glowing light or a fluorescent strip) and in winter I learnt they had custom-made jackets and socks (is there another word??) to protect their paws. While I understood that the drastic changes in weather demand that the animals be treated with compassion, it was still overwhelming to see how much time, money and effort people spent on pets.

I grew up without any contact with animals whatsoever. I had lived in the city all my life in apartments, so I did not have the opportunity to see cows and goats grazing next door, birds chirping or bunnies in cages. But I have seen the scary stray dogs (that always seemed to follow me around wherever I went) and the herd of cows or buffaloes that looked timid while I was at a safe distance. In fact, in school I used to explicitly ask newcomers if they had dogs at home before I befriended them and those who did always knew that they should lock them up if they wanted me to visit them. And now I am in Germany, where I move around constantly in fear of being sniffed at and probably even licked by a variety of dogs…..this is probably God’s way of telling me to change my mind!

Actually dogs are the reason I never go running in the English Garden in Munich. I once saw a runner being chased by a snarling dog and as it was about to chew his tracks, the owner came whistling by around the corner on his bike, pointed to the dog and said with a huge smile 'he is harmless' and I thought 'adhu unakku theriyum, naiku theriyuma??' (You know that, but does the dog know too??)

The ironic moment came when I was waiting in front of the computer for an essay topic in my TOEFL exam and I couldn’t believe my eyes when I saw the topic flash across the screen – “Should pets be treated as family”? Even more unbelievable was what I wrote – thanks to movies and books where the dog bounces over the fence to hug the hero or the cat purs on the heroine’s lap, I got a 6/6 score ! Of course I was not going to write what I have been writing so far in this post! I was pretty sure that the essay would be corrected by someone with 3 dogs and 2 cats and seeing my score, I probably guessed right! That was probably God’s way of preparing me for what I was going to see in Germany...only I missed the sign :D!

The best lesson is probably yet to come, in the form of my kids, who are going to end up being dog/cat/fish/hamster (and what-not) lovers !