Friday, after picking up the kids from school we went to walk Baggu at Neopolis. As we were walking back after a nice long walk a family was walking towards us. I shortened Baggus leash and kept walking. As we got close the child lunged to pet and cuddle the “cute puppy”. I pulled back the dog and quickly told the parents “he’s teething, he might nip and bite”. They reeled in the kid, smiled and moved on.
I know this is quite unlike the usual daro mat daro mat yeh kaatata nahin hai… (don’t worry he does not bite)… Sorry guys, this is an animal, an animal that is going through a painful teething process, he likes to gnaw on gnaw-able toys, teethers, trouser legs, feet, hands and anything and everything that is well, gnaw-able… Just like our kids did, who are also animals, when they were smaller. In fact I still remember how both the kids have on occasion given me bloodied palms or collars from an over enthusiastic bite. Did we as humans stop having kids? So what did we do? We became aware of the problem, we avoided letting the kids run away with their biting, trained them not to bite and we figured out ways to alert strangers who pounced on “cute baby” to shower their love and affection. We also taught the kids that biting was not an acceptable thing to do so that they would never repeat it specially once grown up.
Dogs when they are smaller bite, so do humans. Dogs however don’t go about taking over open spaces and building monstrosities all over in the name of “development” or “investments”. You pride yourselves on the “progress” you’ve made while in reality all you are is a hamster on a wheel running all the time, getting nowhere. Dogs on the other hand have an extremely successful day when they get allowed to maul an empty bottle of milkshake. Who is happier? the guy who goes to sleep and dreams of how his money is working for him and growing by 0.002% while he is sleeping or the dog who goes to sleep dreaming of all the wonderful fun he will have with all the bottles he can gnaw at tomorrow morning?