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 2nd 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.
