Street Smart: 5 Life Lessons I Learnt From A Stray Dog

It's 5 am in the morning. My mother opens up the gate and two regular dogs arrive waiting for this time to eat their food. One has golden fur, and one has black fur. We have nurtured them since they were only a few months old. I started giving food to the golden boy, and after a few months, he brought his friend. That's how their connection with my home started. Soon, they started spending a big part of their day inside my home, sunbathing in winter, and making sure all the home flies are eliminated from this territory. Soon they regained their health, and their fur got dense. This transformation must not have gotten hidden in their community, and I am sure some of their friends would have asked them, "Where are you getting all the food from?" and they must have replied, "We eat the same food. It is just our body type!"

I say so because no other dog visited us with them from their territory. However, this got changed when the black boy became a young father. A beautiful, black female dog with an almost brown face was born, which changed the entire demography of the area. While she stayed with her mother most of the time, she loved her father more than her. I would often see them play far ahead of my home, while her mother would curl up in a corner and sleep in the foggy winters. One month later, my mother called me up, "Harish, look, he has brought his daughter." I went to the main gate and saw her standing there looking at my mother and me in confusion. Are we friend or foe? The first thing that surprised me that day was that when my mother opened up the gate, both her father and the golden boy ran inside my house. This was enough proof that we are their friends. But she stayed outside. She saw them drinking milk and eating their food. But she stayed out. Standing, looking at them, without moving her eyes anywhere else.

For three days, she did the same. She would come to our house with her father, but would not enter. She would stay outside. However, the distance between the gate and her got reduced every day. If one day she is 10 feet outside the gate, the next she is 7 or 8. It took her three days to realise that she could trust us, and that was the day she entered our house. It has been 8 years since this happened. Today, she is almost 60 in dog years, but over these 8 human years, her behaviour and nature, which is far different from any other dog I have seen, have taught me different lessons that any human can implement in their life.

Patience

Most of the time, I see dogs impatient and always in search of something when they are not sleeping. They really can't stay in one place with their eyes open. As normal dog behaviour goes, they will visit the gate of the house where they expect food because the residents have been giving them food for eternity. They wait there for one minute and then just move on with their lives and repeat the same at the other house. Sometimes, yes, they do sleep, but that doesn't count. This dog, however, has learnt the art of patience by doing something out of normal than her peers. She will come to the gate and wait. Seconds, minutes, and hours go by, but she waits at the gate expecting someone to come at some time. This is not a blind game of hit and trial. She has been successful all the time except one time when my mother went to her village for a couple of days. I gave her food, but she still waited at the gate, expecting my mother to come. Except that, she has always been a patient canine who knows that her patience will not go to waste.

Food is not for pleasure

All animals eat food for their survival, except humans, who want what they like as they like at the time they like. I have had a lot of my friends who wouldn't dare eat food unless it is prepared their way. They rarely care about you. If they have to have peanuts in a certain dish, just because that is how they have been eating at their home, nobody can stop them. Not even your disappointing request, "I don't like peanuts in this." Community dogs are not like that. Yes, they have a certain liking for certain foods, but unlike pet dogs, they eat their food for survival and not for pleasure. She was also the same. She has been eating the same food from all the houses for eight years now. But I have never seen her refuse a meal just because it is repeated. Other dogs that live with her sometimes reject rotis when ghee is not applied to them. They reject rusks if that doesn't have a special Britannia taste in them. But she is not like that. It teaches a great lesson that our daily food need not be vastly different all the time. Routine is boring, but if that is giving your body what it wants, we should try to eat the same things continuously, even if for a while.

Adjust

Dogs sometimes do things that seem childish, such as carrying their bed to their favourite place, as they like to sleep there. But community dogs do not have the luxury to select their own place. Where I live, I have seen their resting ground getting smaller and smaller in the last fifteen years. From having grasses everywhere to defecate and sleep, I now see more concrete than there is road. Drains are covered, so no dog can escape harsh weather, and not to mention the area people claim to be their own outside their houses has also been increasing with time. With all this territory stolen from the community dogs, I have never seen her attack and take revenge. They reduced it to a mere green patch of grass to now settling on small areas in front of the homes where they are fed. From being under the trees to sleeping under the cars on hot days, and when asked to move to another place, they quietly leave the place and sleep at another. Never asking for more, and in return, giving everything they used to have, adjusting every day. Now, that dog sleeps on concrete instead of grass, but it has rarely bothered her. 

Fight with Equals

Dogs fight, and they do so every day. This is something I find as a good similarity between humans and them. However, there are huge differences in the violence of humans and of animals. Leaving aside the preying part (which is the inherited behaviour of all carnivores), animals take up fights with the same animals as themselves. A dog will always fight a dog, a bull with another bull, a cat with another, etc. When there are two different animals, and there is no scope for hunting (or preying), the more powerful animal never picks up the fight with a weaker animal. A cow will never kick a dog unnecessarily, given that it can seriously harm them. Sometimes, dogs will pick fights with smaller cows and calves, but that's just because they think their territory is being taken by an animal similar in size to the size of them. When it comes to the area near my home, I have never seen dogs do that.

Over time and with consistent violence used against them, dogs in my area have learned not to pick fights with humans. A simple reason: humans are powerful. If a human hits a dog, and the dog reacts, the results are most certainly going to be in favour of humans. Dogs understand that since they are powerless, they will always lose this fight and end up suffering. It gives an important lesson. Sometimes, when possible, an adjustment is fine without escalating the issue, especially when the chances of your defeat are near 100%. The dog that center to this post has never fought with any humans. She believes in peace and harmony with them. Occasionally, as she is the eldest, she picks a bloody fight with other dogs, but that's just to save her territory. Rest, she just wants to be left alone.

Forgive and Let Go

A great lesson that dogs will teach you is not to hold on to grudges. You beat them or shoo them today, they will come back again tomorrow at your call. They tend to trust anyone too blindly, which is what lands them in trouble a lot of the time. But, they never keep the grudges. They do remember what you did, but they do not take it on to you. Maybe that's why they do not have a tendency to take revenge and just keep their business to themselves. This is a great virtue to learn from them that will help lead a peaceful life. This dog has been a victim of violence from my neighbour, who died a couple of years ago. For several years, he never missed a chance to take out his internal issues on innocent dogs and their pups. One day, when he purchased a new bike, I saw him feeding a laddoo to her. This is normal, as people give food to an animal when they purchase a new vehicle to gain karmic points and bless the vehicle. While his karma never picked up, I was amazed to see that she still went to him and ate that sweet, given that she is not starving or struggling for food. 

Community dogs are raw and dependent on humans as their natural habitats are replaced by concrete. We can't see them hunt for food (which they occasionally do, though, to keep the rodent population in check) and find them lazing around most of the day. However, while their environment has changed, their behaviour still remains intact. The barking and biting that the 'civilised' population complains about is the same behaviour for which your ancestors adopted them and travelled with them. If you think they can suddenly change and not respond to threats in their own way, it's not the dog but you who needs treatment. They have transformed and evolved alongside humans, and all of their traits are still intact to that "trustworthy" era where humans selfishly adopted them for their needs and then selfishly discarded them when they felt dogs were no longer necessary for their safety. It was a one-sided love, by all means. Dogs fell in love and trusted us while we showed that we did what we did with evil in our hearts. Their love is still the same, and I hope one day we realise this and give them the respect and honour they deserve for protecting our ancestors with their lives. The dog that has visited us for eight long years, we will be in her debt forever for teaching us these lessons and helping us improve as humans.