JOIN USMy husband and I adopted our two dogs a while back. The first one to come into our lives was Cooper, an indie we adopted when he was just a little older than one month. He has now grown to be a much-loved dog with boundless energy. Bailey, on the other hand, is our little stealer of hearts who quietly crept into our lives.
I've always been a dog lover and when I was in Delhi with my family, we had a labrador mix called Ginny. But when I moved to Bengaluru, I really missed my family and knew that I would get a dog in the future. I was just waiting to settle down in my professional life.
Three years ago, when my colleague showed me a picture of a little puppy that was up for adoption, I realised that I had seen the cutest furball ever! I asked my husband if we can get him home and he said yes!
We went to visit the puppy in the evening where we met the vibrant duo, Priya Chetty-Rajagopal and Harini Raghavan, who were looking after the new mommy and her puppies in the building where they worked. They took us to see the litter and that's it! We were floored and knew we belonged to that little handsome puppy. Little did we know that we were going to be his slaves.
Cooper used to suffer from separation anxiety during the first year he was with us. He used to howl the whole day and destroyed everything he could get his little paws on - from slippers and the couch to even the main door!
We could have given him up but that was never even an option for us. We had to figure out a way to get him out of his separation anxiety. We worked with him, day in and day out, till he finally realised that we were not going to abandon him.
Three years later, I can admit with great reluctance that we belong to him and suffer from separation anxiety ourselves when we are away at work. It's not the other way around anymore.
Bailey - a lab mix girl - just walked into our apartment block one day, scared and hungry. We asked around but couldn't find her owner – she had clearly been abandoned. She knew basic commands but was always scared and winced at the smallest of hand gestures, as if she had been previously abused. The guard of my apartment decided to adopt her and used to keep her with him all the time.
A couple of months later, my apartment got new tenants who did not like dogs and used to complain about Bailey and Cooper all the time. The guard was instructed to give up Bailey and that is when we decided to move houses. We knew we couldn't leave Bailey behind and took her with us.
We discovered a month later, after moving to a new house, that Bailey had epilepsy. That was a whole new journey for us - figuring out how to deal with an epileptic dog. But what helped, both for Cooper's separation anxiety and for Bailey's epilepsy, was that they had each other and took comfort in being with the other while we were out at work the whole day.
Both our dogs have taught us a lot - unconditional love and an inordinate amount of acceptance and patience being the foremost. Nobody would've faulted us had we decided to give up any of the two, but that was never even an option! We were a family and we trusted our dogs as much as they trusted us.
A pet will change your life forever, and you need to be ready for that kind of responsibility. They will bring unprecedented joy into your lives, along with a whole host of other emotions. But for every single emotion you give to your pets, they will give you so much more! All of us love each other in our own little way! Our little family may not be perfect but it's ours.