The Journey of Trying to Parent an Extraordinary Dog
A couple of weeks ago, I was on Amazon trying to add some new books to my library, when I stumbled upon some titles which were all about raising dogs, training them and of course, stories with dogs with them. I scrolled through the titles amazed at the amount of people reading them. Then I wondered what possibly prompted Amazon to recommend those books to me. Of course in this situation, they are 6 years too late, because that’s how long Chelvi has been with us.
That’s right, I’m a brother to a 6 year old indie tornado named Chelvi. Chelvi in my native language Kannada, means a girl of extraordinary beauty. There’s nothing extraordinary about her in single appearance, but the more you spend time with her, the more you realize that this is no ordinary dog. This is a hell raising tornado.
At the moment when I write this, she’s crouched down in the garden painting a picture of innocence. But she’s all the reason I have to believe that first impressions can be completely off. Just this morning, after her weekly bath, she proceeded to have a jump around in the mud, when my brother had spent the previous hour scrubbing her clean from the previous week. However, a part of the blame might be shifted to us because my brother and me have developed a devious system to tie her for the weekly bath.
We usually just scream “Chelvi walking” and wait for her to run from wherever she is to the gate with her tail wagging at an incredible pace. Once she’s at the gate, we take the leash used for bathing and tie her there. Once she’s done with her bath, that’s when she gets to go for a walk. It’s a foolproof system and it kind of beats chasing her from corner to corner to take her for her bath.
Another thing she is quite the fan of, is running away from the house the moment she spots the gate slightly open. For Chelvi, this is usually the opportunity to explore the neighborhood dumpster and grab onto some leftovers thrown away by our neighbors. At times, its about exploring the same roads and sniffing the gutters we have in our neighborhood. But the thing is, these explorations usually last around 15 minutes, after which she runs back home with her tongue out satisfied with her weekly expedition. The only possible theory I have for this absolutely insane behavior is that she only goes so far, because she’s afraid of the street dogs. At home, well she’s a warrior barking fiercely at her enemy dogs and when she comes face to face with them, that’s when she retreats at an incredible pace.
I’ve heard from dog owners and other people, that dogs often adapt the personality of their owners. Well in this case, I’m not quite sure whose personality she’s adopted, because there’s no one in the house who behaves like her in certain situations. Like when it comes to food. She never eats the food we put in the bowl right away, she waits until we get inside the house and then attacks it in full swing. Its like some sort of passive aggressive behavior and it annoys us to no end. Especially when we have no clue whether she likes the food or not. There are times when we put food in and go about our day, and we come back a couple hours later, to find the food untouched. And Chelvi pretending to not know anything about what she’s done.
Another behavior of hers when it comes to food, is usually when my mom and dad are outside in the morning drinking coffee and eating rusk. Even though the rusk is near her and she has the opportunity to grab it, she just sits down and stares at my mom and dad as if to say “Oh won’t you gib me a piece?”. Its taken us a long time, to just look away from those black eyes and refuse her a piece, because we know she’ll spoil her dinner.
As much as I identify as her older brother, it’s more or less all 4 members in our family being co parents to her. And we have grown very attached to her over the years, so much so we’ve completely shunned our next door neighbours whenever they try to tell us their complaints. As much as we want to “love thy neighbor”, it’s impossible to do it when a neighbor’s constant complaint is that she barks. I mean of course she barks. That’s the only way she can communicate anything.
Over the years, we’ve learnt to differentiate the barks based on the duration of it. A long bark usually means she is feeling sad or scared about something. Or that she’s hungry. A series of short barks means she’s angry or something, or she’s trying to scare the nice old Labrador that passes our house during his evening walk.
As much as she continues to exasperate us on a daily basis, there are some things I’ve learnt from her that I try to adopt in some places in life. The key word is some here, because I don’t think people would take too kindly to me making a cute face while they’re eating some delicious food. The first thing that I think I’ve learned from Chelvi is to be okay with forgiving people. As much as I’m proud of my height, there are days, when I’ve bumped my head on a doorway, or trampled upon Chelvi’s legs when I feel like its possibly the worst thing ever. However, in these situations when something like this has happened with Chelvi, she’s never actually taken it to heart and has still wagged her tail and come around just moments later.
Its not possible for everyone to be on their top game all the time, there are times people commit mistakes unknowingly. We just have to understand a mistake has been done and move on.
The second thing about Chelvi is the amount of excitement she shows while meeting people. Be it new or old, she is always excited to meet any guest who shows up. For us, its a constant fear that one day Chelvi will greet someone who’s come to rob the house for instance, with the same happy excitement rather than aggressive barking. But as much as it surprises us, it’s a reminder to be nice and good to people.
The third thing about her is her ability to sit watching the horizon on the garden without doing anything at all. The truth is she can do nothing and laze around, while I’ve got responsibilities to get to. But there are days when that sitting down for 30 minutes while watching the sunset is a blissful feeling. Its good to slow down sometimes you know? Like now its looks beautiful outside, and I think I’m gonna go watch that. With the best dog in the world.
