Life is meaningless without joy and the pursuit of it. Joy to me is being with creatures who see your soul and can love you without the use of words. I have social anxiety and I sometimes struggle with communication. I’m so uninhibited in the company of my closest people and nearly all animals (unless they are with (human) strangers, in which case I feel the need to act appropriately). Paradise to me is an endless green field with every animal I have ever formed a connection with (mostly dogs, but also a few squirrels and cats and ducks), all in their happy element, running, playing and living in harmony.
For the majority of my life, I have been tormented by the voices in my head. I never felt like I belonged, or anybody really understood me. For the longest time, I was searching for purpose, a reason to wake up each morning, actually walk and work alongside ‘time’ (as opposed to being passively carried by it to my demise).
My life dramatically changed forever with the arrival of Lisa, a tiny pup oblivious to her tremendous potential and the sequence of changes she was about to set in motion.
A little backstory: I grew up admiring animals, especially dogs, as most children do; and, I was denied a pet, as most parents do. I wasn’t happy about it, but accepted my lack of power. Fast-forward to the summer of 2019, I am in Toronto, pursuing my undergraduate degree, and in the midst of a mental-health crisis. Over the course of the preceding year, I had developed an eating disorder. It got to a point wherein I was forced to take a semester break from university and return home, to Delhi. To cheer up their depressed daughter, my parents agreed to foster a pup from a local shelter. That’s when Lisa entered my life, and I immediately fell in love with her. This was 2 weeks before I was going back to Canada to continue my studies. I was able to convince my parents to adopt Lisa so I could see her again. 4 months later the pandemic began. The world was brought to a halt, and my mental health was quickly plummeting. The only thing bringing any hope into my life was the thought of meeting Lisa again. So, as soon as I could fly home, I did. At the time, I had had very little experience interacting with dogs, plus, I didn’t have much knowledge of canine behaviour. Slowly, Lisa taught me a great deal, not only about herself and her species, but also about myself! India has a large stray dog population which has reached a point where there is constant conflict between humans and dogs. Taking Lisa out for walks was difficult as the dogs outside our home wouldn’t let us pass, and one time we got surrounded by them from all sides with no route to escape. I’m not one to give up easily and I, for sure wasn’t going to carry around a stick to scare the others dogs away like many pet owners do. I have always believed the dogs outside have just as much right to live and go about as my dog, and being territorial is in their nature. They’re just protecting their area, so who am I to come in and ask them to leave? I would watch Lisa sit at the window watching the outside dogs and bark at them like they were the enemy. I wondered how great would it be if they could be friends! To achieve this, I decided to befriend them, and since Lisa trusted me, she would perhaps realise that the outside dogs aren’t a threat. And so began my journey into this incredible world of stray dogs. This was February 2021. I went from feeding these doggies every now and then, to taking full responsibility of them. I slowly formed a bond with each of them, so much so that they would follow me around and listen to my commands (only sometimes!). I then introduced Lisa to the pack, and they immediately submitted to her. I don’t think Lisa was expecting that because she was ready to fight. The youngest of the lot, Jackie, was the same age as Lisa, and they took to each other very quickly and enjoyed playing together. I then introduced my others dogs to them and they behaved the exact same way. Because they trusted me, they trusted whoever was with me. I adopted my second dog, Blaze, in September 2020 from the same shelter that we got Lisa from. My third dog, Fortune was an abandoned case found in our neighbourhood in August 2021. I fostered him for a little bit before adopting him. My 4th dog, Lily, was found injured outside my home right after the festival of Diwali in November 2021. She came to me asking for help, and was very polite and gentle while I got her treated. Many dogs get displaced over the weeks leading up to Diwali and the night itself. They are terrified of the loud cracker noises and the smoke and fire. Lily, I believe was a stray from another area but lost her way and got injured. Her too, I fostered for a bit trying to find a permanent home, before becoming a foster failure once again!
Along with some devoted individuals, I have been promoting community adoption of stray dogs. This is where you take care of the dogs in your neighbourhood. The caregivers would take full responsibility of their well-being. People are already doing this, but are frequently subjected to terrible harassment. Normalising community adoption is of utmost importance. Dogs have as much right to the land as we do, and we need to strive for peaceful coexistence. Their misbehavior is often caused by human lack of empathy and hostility. Dogs only mirror our behaviour. Treat them with a little bit of kindness, and you will get so much more in return. My ultimate goal is to establish a dog rehabilitation centre in Delhi. The purpose of it would be to provide a temporary place for training and rehabilitation for dogs who have developed behaviour issues, due to various reasons, such as human hostility, their own anxiety etc. But some dogs are just not able to cope with the busy and rough street life. I want to give them a permanent home, as well, at this centre.
[Aside: While caring for the stray dogs in my neighbourhood, I came across a peculiar occurrence which I call the ‘Not Here’ phenomenon. It’s the tendency of humans to remove or distance ourselves from anything we deem undesirable, without actually making any actual changes, or taking the time and effort to come up with plausible solutions. While feeding the strays in Delhi, I would frequently hear disgruntled residents say ‘do it anywhere but here’; ‘here’ being their immediate vicinity (which by the way, was the corner of a public park). I always cleaned up after myself, and the dogs for the most part were very well-behaved. I didn’t even have to be feeding, petting them also constituted wrongful behaviour. And these people never played fair, food and water bowls have been demolished, the feeding area sign board has been stolen, and the dogs have been hit and made to feel unsafe. I may be proactive in and passionate about solving this persisting problem, but that doesn’t make me immune to this phenomenon. I recently realised I exhibit similar avoidant and dismissive characteristics when it comes to my antagonist, anxiety. Whenever an unpleasant thought creeps into my mind, my first reaction is to run as far away from it as possible, sometimes it is expressed quite literally, like I did after high school when I moved to Canada for university. My motivation for that was not to get a better education; I didn’t even know what I wanted to study, if anything at all, I was just escaping my current environment. I believed if I moved to another country, I can start over. Oh, how wrong was I! Because I repeated the same mistakes over and over and over again, until there was nowhere left to run. I was forced to realise that the problem was me, and there’s no running away from the self.]