My friend, the stray

I first met her in January of 2020. We had just moved to a new home, right across the city, and my wife and me were walking around the lovely tree lined streets of our colony. We were attracted by the noise – a lot of growling and barking.

Backed up into a corner by a bunch of snarling strays was a bitch, fully white with specks of brown at the tips of her ears. She was cowering but also protecting a smaller dog. It didn’t seem like her pup, though she certainly acted like it.

I shooed away the other dogs and asked her to follow me. She did, and the pup trailed along. We carefully skirted the territory of the other dogs, taking the long way around to my house.

I decided to call her Chippi, because she was white, though she looked nothing like a Chippiparai. She had a collar decorated with twisted wire and bits of rope. She also had whipping scars, and our neighbor, a vet, told me that from the size and shape of her nipples, someone may have used her as a breeder. This dog did not have an easy life.

Anyway, Chippi and me, we’ve had a bunch of adventures since then. She drew the ire of some colony residents, because she chases bikes. So I taught myself a little about dogs from the helpful videos of Ramachandran Subramanian and tried to train her to be calm around people.

It kind of worked, but she still chases bikes.

When people started demanding that the colony get rid of the strays, I wrote an article and circulated it. I’m better at that than I am with interpersonal communications. It kind of worked too.

Soon the dogs began to follow me everywhere and it became really hard to get them to quit. One day, the pup, who we’d started calling Huggy, followed me out into the traffic and was crushed under the wheels of a mini truck. I brought him home, but he died the next day. My guilt trip was terrible.

Some months later, someone broke Chippi’s right hind leg, and Sam, who cares for the dogs in the colony took her to a hospital. I went along. She stayed in my garage for a few days, until she healed. Now she walks with a little limp.

Chippi sleeping off a massive dose of painkillers after surgery to fix her leg.

I’d like to think we have a bond of some sort now. She listens to me if I ask her nicely. She’s still a free-spirited stray, so she isn’t obedient like a pet would be, but she obliges. I haven’t adopted her or anything. She still lives on the street, but we spend time simply sitting together whenever we can.