Lessons I Learnt from My Dog-A Guest Post by Kasturi Patra

I'd first heard of her from my brother. She was a POTF fan. That's all I knew when I sent her a friend request which she accepted. We talked and we became friends. We met at her marriage. She's been around, giving me advice now and then and is like a distant elder sister.

Kasturi Patra is a lot of things. Confident, sassy, smiling. I've never seen her angry. She's a wonderful human being and I am fortunate to have her among my friends. She's in the middle of writing a novel whose second draft she's finished.

She stops by the blog today to talk about her dog. This post was originally published on her blog ViaKat and you can also find it here. She's the kind of writer I hope to one day be.

Please welcome her to the blog!

The Bilge Master

It was a few days before Diwali in 2015. A friend had come over in the evening and while we were chatting with her, a soul piercing howl shattered our conversation. Two months ago, a stray dog in our locality had given birth to a litter of pups and it seemed that the cries came from one of them.

Hubby and I rushed downstairs to find this pup crying in pain. While some of our neighbours were busy fighting with the delivery truck driver and his helper for having run over the pup, I noticed that the furry bundle simply lay in a corner looking up for help. In an instinct, I took him on my lap. We hadn’t thought of adopting a dog before this. We already had two cats (who’d even travelled with us from Kolkata to Delhi when we shifted cities)  and that seemed more than enough. But the moment I held him, he stopped crying and stared at me with those huge brown melting chocolate like eyes. And we knew he needed us. A series of vet visits and treatments later, if you look closely, you’d still notice that Woof does not put his full weight on his right hind leg. Yet he is one of the most active, playful and happy dog that you’ll come across.

This really isn’t the day when I wanted to write good things about my dog. It rained heavily last night (the heaviest Delhi experienced so far, this year), the maid was late and he decided to pee for full two minutes on our bedroom’s floor. Dude is almost 3 years old, can you believe it? Well, if it’s wet outside, he refuses to step into the wet ground and instead chooses the room to be his warm and cozy toilet. Arrrggghhh!!

I was mad at him. He received a few spanks on his nose with a rolled up newspaper. And yet, after a while, he lay next to me and licked my face and all my troubles melted away. I do not know how they are so forgiving but that’s how dogs are. And while I was still upset with the morning’s routine being thrown into disarray with the dirty dishes and the wet floor and hubby’s getting late for office (hubby cleaned up all the pee in both the rooms, Yes, both because my other dog also decided to pee on the living room floor but more on her later.), I noticed Woof wagging his tail and trying to play with me. He seemed to say, “How long can you be angry with this lolling tongue, the wet nose, and these pleading eyes dipped in innocence and mischief in equal amounts?

My dog doesn’t keep grudges.

My dog lives in the moment.

 My dog makes mistakes but he’s ready to make up for those in his own ways.

Every time either of us are back home from outside, he behaves as if our mere presence is responsible for all his life’s joys.

My dog licks my tears and puts his head on my knees to show that happiness is just around the corner.

Irrespective of my physical or mental state, whether it’s my morning breath or I’m sick and miserable, my dog simply loves me. No judgement whatsoever. 

Before he came to my life, I never imagined it was possible to love an animal to this extent.

Half an hour back I was on the verge of a breakdown and I was searching for guided meditations on the Insight Timer app to calm me down. Then something came upon me, and instead, I chose to write about my dog. I’m already feeling better. I don’t know if on that night before Diwali, it was him crying for help or my soul inviting him over to save me again and again and again.