A Banker & A Barker

That’s the newest member of the Banker household, cradled in my arms. The picture was taken by Rohan More of Japalouppe, on the day I took her home. I picked her up to get into the car, when he said, ‘She’s so cosy in your arms, I must take a picture’. I offered him my iPhone. Since then, I’ve shot several dozen more pictures of her, and perhaps I’ll post some of them here too, at the risk of seriously exceeding the cuteness quotient of this blog.

Who is she? She’s a pedigreed Basset Hound puppy, all of 2 months old. After considering several hundred names, including Sanskrit and Scottish ones (Basset Hounds are a Scottish breed) we finally all liked the name Willow, because it just seemed right for her.

I think she’s adorable, and since I work from home, she spends most of her day with me. My son Ayush and daughter Yashka can barely drag themselves away to go to college and school respectively, which shows you how addictive she is. Currently, we’re trying to housebreak her and that’s more easily said than done, since she’s very intelligent, wilful, and has the famous basset hound stubborn streak. But she’s such a sweetheart, I don’t mind cleaning up after her and giving her time to learn the basics–which, by the way, she’s learning amazingly fast and well. She already responds very well to me, sits when told, jumps when told, and has even started to use the toilet a fair amount of the time. At this rate, she’ll be growling at me to leave the toilet seat down in a few days!

We have a nice garden in our building compound, which is wonderful for her. I find it cruel to keep a dog cooped up 24/7 in a flat, so I take her down several times a day, for play, exercise, training, as well as…ahem, using the public toilet. She loves her ‘down’time, as I call it. We’ve bonded beautifully and I can’t imagine not having her around now, and it’s only been ten days.

I had a puppy when I was a boy, a beautiful luxuriant-haired Cocker Spaniel I named Tippu Sultan (it was my mom’s idea, but I thought it was a cute name too, and you can see my fondness for historical characters even then!). He died of tick fever in less than six months, which broke my heart. This is my first dog since then and I cherish every moment with her. I guess I’m also at that age, 43, with two almost fully grown-up teenage kids (18 and 14) where it’s nice to have something this young and small to take care of. I miss having little kids around me, and taking care of them, and sometimes think that I wouldn’t mind adopting someday. But until then, Willow is a baby doll on four legs, and a whole individual person in her own right, with a distinct personality, traits and a fierce intelligence all her own. Did I mention how smart she is? Can’t say it often enough.

I’m neither a ‘dog person’ or a ‘cat person’ and to some extent, even feel that keeping pets is a uniquely human form of cruelty. After all, these are animals meant to live free in the wild, not be trained to do things on command, and obey us tall bipeds and be their pets. I remember writing a poem titled The Kingdom of Beasts as a young boy, it was published in a magazine when I was 14. It was written after Tippu died and it was about the sadness and anger I felt then at us keeping pets and caging them in our houses for our own selfish pleasure.

And yet here I am now, keeping a pet puppy and ‘training’ her. All I can say in my defense is that I respect her as much as any person, and will do my best to make sure she never completely loses her sense of being ‘born free’ and ‘living free’.

And as the headline above suggests, I’m now seriously considering changing the ‘n’ in my surname to an ‘r’!