A boy and his dog

Roohi and Jacky were adult dogs by the time Chubbocks came into our lives. Roohi had always been a little afraid of and snappish at little kids, so she stayed far away from him on most occasions, and later, when he was around 3 or 4, even nipped his feet if he got too close. Jacky, on the other hand, adored Chubbocks and adopted him as soon as the baby came home.

While we had had grand plans for sanitizing Chubbocks’s baby environment, Jacky was having none of it. He made our room his own and refused to budge. Every night, he would poke his handsome, giant shaggy head into the cloth cradle that was Chubbocks’s first bed to ensure the baby was safely ensconced inside before settling down himself. On one occasion, when Ajji had taken Chubbocks out for a nap so I could catch some rest away from the tetchy baby, Jacky was absolutely frantic when he couldn’t spot the baby in the cradle and worriedly roamed the house until he saw him in Ajji’s lap. He took a deep whiff of the baby smell to reassure himself before settling at Ajji’s feet like a guardian.

Having said that, Chubbocks had never shown any particular interest in dogs. Then one day we went out for a picnic in the colony park next to our house and met a friendly, shaggy, black and white stray whom he immediately befriended and named Buster after the dog in Enid Blyton’s Five Findouters, before he discovered she was female. Soon, I found that he had become friends with and knew the names of practically every dog on campus - the pets and the adopted strays. Chubbocks stayed friends with Buster and was pestering us to get her inoculations and neutering done, when we discovered she was pregnant.

There were some neighbours who were concerned about the fact that she was about to have pups and wanted to get her thrown out of the complex. We weren’t having any of that, and immediately brought her home to live in our yard in the daytime and in the house at night. Buster soon proved that she had been someone’s abandoned pet, due to her beautiful house trained manners.

Eventually, she went on to give birth to 8 pups on our windowsill. Unfortunately she rolled over on one in the process, and a nearby flowerpot rolled over onto another so only 6 pups survived. Over the next few days, it was a delight to watch the kids’ tender expressions as they spent their days glued to the windowsill, watching the little puppies suckle, whine and gradually open their eyes to the world around them. It seemed as if the kids were lit by a magic light from inside as they watched the magic of life unfold.

We managed to get one male puppy placed. The rest would have to take their chances living in our gated complex, though we got them all vaccinated and sterilized. Then Aman begged us that he wanted to adopt the remaining male puppy. A was very reluctant, since he felt it would be an added burden as we have very busy lives. But having watched Roohi and Jacky integrate themselves into our lives, I couldn’t deny Chubbocks the chance to bring up a dog. So Licky, the pup entered our homes and hearts.

He was a very cute and yet masterful little pup, one of the more active and assertive ones from the little. Very cute, his white face was framed by two symmetrical brown patches over each of his eyes. He seemed highly intelligent as he started to get trained quite early, and Chubbocks while initially lazy, took to his role as a dog-parent quite quickly. The first few months were spent trying to train the excitable puppy into proper pooping and peeing habits.

Initially, every time we took Licky outside, he would get off the leash and run off or run back home. Many leather leashes were chewed up and we went through a variety of leashes before hitting on one which worked for the pup’s comfort and ours equally. Chubbocks read up on dog training, coaxed by us, and soon would take him on multiple walks a day, leading him carefully on his leash. These walks also became a bonding ritual as either his dad or I would accompany him, as there were several larger and more aggressive dogs ready to attack. The sharp corners of our wooden center table were gnawed into soft curves by the naughty little dog.

Every time Chubbocks came in from outside, Licky would be ready to welcome his loving master by yelping shrilly, licking any part of him he could reach and fawning all over his feet. Meanwhile Chubbocks, who had turned into a boy that was embarrassed to hug his parents properly even in the privacy of the home would lean over Licky and croon love names and pet names and fondle and pet him without the slightest self-consciousness. Every visitor to the house had to be ceremonially introduced to Licky by a Chubbocks whose face radiated a mixture of pride, overwhelming love and almost disbelief in his luck at having this lovely puppy. He also ensured he was responsible for feeding the pup at night and would clean his bowl before putting in the mix of veggies, eggs and rotis and Pedigree that formed the pup’s diet.

Licky used to know by instinct when Chubbocks was coming from school and would stand by the door, ready to welcome him. And every once in a while, Licky would go absolutely mad, hurling himself over chairs. Jumping over center tables and rushing about the house in a total frenzy, while Aman watched and laughed helplessly. If we ever put him out into the backyard, he would climb up on the windowsill of the family room and leap up and down and whine until we let him back inside, only to whine to go out again, almost immediately. I had trained Licky to sit and Chubbocks taught him to shake hands, beaming with delight and amazement each time the pup responded. In the winter, Licky settled into his small basket and Chubbocks would lovingly ensure the pup was well covered up by a blanket, before he went to bed.

We had been discussing that it was about time Licky started sleeping in the kids’ room – so far he had been sleeping on the ground floor so that the housekeeper could let him out into the yard for an early morning ablution, while we slept on the 2^nd floor of the house. And then – tragedy struck. One night when A and I were out and the children asleep, Licky ate up a rat which had eaten rat poison.

When we saw him the next morning, he was jerking convulsively, and the housekeeper revealed that she had seen him eat the rat but as he vomited right away, she thought nothing of it and hadn’t bothered to inform us. Chubbocks and I rushed the pup to our vet nearby and sat outside and prayed. I refused to give into the scary thoughts going through my head and Chubbocks clutched my hand hard. We were both discussing the fact that we needed to buy a new pack of Pedigree for young dogs and a new leash when the vet came out of his OT and said it was all over. The poison had spread to the poor little pup's brain.

I have never heard anything as heartrending as the howl of anguish Chubbocks let out before he fell onto the floor. It couldn't be over just like that! He was a very nice little doggie, adored not only by his family but all of Chubbocks' friends. Licky had been with us less than a year. For his upcoming birthday, Chubbocks had been planning to get him a meat cake and a new dog bowl. He was utterly and completely distraught, shattered by this senseless tragedy and almost unable to speak through his sobs for the rest of the day. It was an utterly disheartening day in which we barely made it through the motions, cremating our wonderful little Licky and coming back to a house that seemed so much quieter and more listless.

For months afterwards, Chubbocks moped around the house, a shadow of his former self. Each and every thing would remind him of Licky, including walking around our complex, and remind him of the loss that he had suffered. While the other two were also affected deeply, Licky had been Chubbocks’s dog from the first moment. It was Chubbocks' first love and he had given his whole heart to the little puppy, and in turn the puppy had trusted and adored him with his whole heart. The two had been friends, playmates, dog and master and soulmates for the brief time they had spent together. Eventually, we packed away a memory box of the little dog who had illuminated our lives for a brief, shining instant - a book he had chewed up, his latest leash, his water bowl and his food bowl - and put them away from sight, though not out of our hearts. We hadn't even managed to get a photograph of Licky, since he used to move so fast, he was a blur in all of them.

Later, a friend asked if she could gift Chubbocks a dog, but he said he would prefer to adopt one of Licky’s siblings who lived around the neighbourhood. Playey, the runt of the litter and a truly untrainable yet nice little dog came into our homes. Nominally she is Chubbocks’s dog, but I never see the kind of wholehearted interest, play or adoration shining out of  his eyes for her. Losing Licky was a very hard blow and in his deepest heart, he has still not gotten over the loss. There’s a part of his heart that I feel has closed – if not forever, for a very long time – and won’t reopen for any other dog. One can only hope that Licky in his heaven knows how much he meant to one little boy and his family.