Love

As time went on I met various ex-pats and locals involved with OSDV – there was a lady looking after an injured dog, Vera who feeds the dogs rice every day, and 2 young boys were very kind to the street dogs and reminded us to bring collars for some new dogs they have found. I also came to know the dogs: Lotus, the sweetest girl ever, head sporting a huge scar from where she had been hit by a rock/kicked/ or the likes, Cheeky, Sunny and his sterilised girlfriend, impossibly shy Timmy, the puppies of the beach pack. There were more dogs up at the cliff car parks too, and the Temple pack – one of which has a huge tumour on his testicles, another who is blind in one eye. I had a heart warming moment one night when I went to feed them at the temple and there was a Swami from the temple already chucking biscuits for them. So we had a laugh and helped each other ensure all the dogs were fed.

Eliza remarked once that everyone had their project when they started out – mine became Pistach (or Pistachio as I mistakenly called her and it kind of stuck), Lady’s biggest puppy. We went to feed and check on the family one evening and the local stall holders told us Pistachio had been hit by a ‘car’. This seemed like a lie from the beginning, as she was a 3-week old puppy and it was her muzzle and face that was injured – had a car hit her, it seemed more likely she’d have been dead outright. Anyway, her nose and snout were caked in blood, and her nose was obviously blocked too, as she was struggling to breathe and having fits that looked like she was choking, but she was still alive, and after calling the vet in Varkala village we realised all we could do was wait for the morning to take her there. Lady was also limping.

Come morning we took Pistachio in a puppy carrier to the vet – in a Tuk Tuk – and she seemed a little better, still slow and probably concussed but breathing easier. The vet took one look at her and said she was fine. After we practically begged him to give her a physical examination, he listened to her breathing with a stethoscope and deduced she was having trouble breathing (I’ve never been to a vet so blatantly uninterested in an animal’s well being, but that’s another story). He prescribed human medicine for her – nasal drops for colds, Calpol cough syrup and an antibiotic liquid. Having travelled India a while, I shouldn’t have expected anything else – but I’d never realised the huge need for medical supplies and vets here.

Nonetheless, after just a day of her medicine, Pistachio had improved hugely! By day 3 she was back to playing on the grassy verge, running up to everyone who walked past for a cuddle and to play, and essentially being the little puppy I had first met. I normally went in the morning and Eliza joined in the evening to ‘treat’ her – nasal drops first, which she was hugely unimpressed by and wriggled like anything to escape, Calpol in a dropper to her mouth (most of which went down her neck and my hands…) and saving the best for last, the antibiotic, which must taste really nice because she lapped it up like milk. I also cleaned her cut nose with an antiseptic (again, she was not a fan) and put on Germolene. Overkill? Probably. For a few days, she was the most drugged up, best looked after puppy in Varkala.

I should also mention, the day after we took Pistachio to the vet, Lady’s other two puppies were taken away. Again, it was hard to get a straight answer out of the shopkeepers nearby – a family had come to take them to Tamil Nadu because they had fallen in love with them, said one girl, and another told me a man had taken them away. Pistachio was left because she was injured. ‘All of Lady’s puppies have died’, Eliza told me, so I suppose the poor mum was used to it – maybe I was anthropomorphizing, but I thought Lady was grieving for them. I came to give Pistachio her medicine that night and she was alone, and Lady was lying in another alleyway, so I took her to Pistachio and they were delighted to see each other (as if Lady had given her up for dead too).

Anyway – a couple nights before I was to leave, we seemed to have done a really good thing – as I said, Pistachio was back to good health (which was nothing short of a miracle considering the terrible vet, medicine and that I was only really succeeding in getting the antibiotics down her!),  Lady was still limping but staying with Pistachio again. We walked Eliza’s pups at about 6 pm and Pistachio was on the grass, doing that cute little puppy thing they do when they bat the air with their paws, pouncing at flies, the picture of health.

Well when we came back to feed Lady, they told us the white puppy was dead. Another car. We went to see her body (dumped unceremoniously in a patch of wild land/ rubbish) and there were flies and ants crawling all over her little muzzle – which was again bloody, exactly like the first time, and the rest of her was untouched. How exactly a car can only clip the nose of a puppy and kill her, I’m unsure, but either way, she was dead. All that wonderful, mischievous light and playfulness extinguished in a heartbeat. a driver not looking where they were going – or in the (more likely) cruel action of some human.

Eliza said – everyone has their project, and everyone comes away with their own horror story. Pistachio was mine all rolled up into one. The street dogs in Varkala desperately need to be cared for – Kerala is clearly no different to the rest of India animal care wise, even if they trump the ‘developed’ card for tourism’s sake. The main issue is obviously sterilisation – there needs to be a drastic reduction in the dog population, and they can then be properly vaccinated against rabies.

But beyond this, there needs to be some sort of education. I understand completely that it is not in the Indian culture to care for animals – obviously, that is a broad, sweeping generalisation and I’ve encountered plenty Indians who love their dogs, but typically, they’re treated like vermin. After leaving Varkala I went to work in an animal shelter in Goa, and the dogs were kept in their cages all day. They were fed, watered, and medically treated. There was absolutely no understanding of their need for stimulation, exercise, play, attention, love – the staff looked at me like I was insane when I asked them to help me walk them, when I picked up the puppies and tried to hand them to a female worker she shrank away in disgust. This attitude prevails in most places in India I have been – you get weird looks feeding street dogs, petting them.

What I’m getting at is, I suppose, I knew all of this already – I just hadn’t spent 2 weeks face to face with it. So that’s why I think there has to be some kind of educational program to teach locals to be kind to dogs (and other animals) – it just seems, like many issues in India, to be a long way off.

The work OSDV is doing is amazing, and I will definitely be back. I hope when I return the situation of the dogs will have improved!