A Cocker Spaniel with a liking for Indian veggies

I still remember when my daughter and husband brought home this wriggly-looking little doggy, all of five weeks. It was pouring that day.

We were living in Hyderabad and a sad, sloppy, wet puppy had travelled all the way from Bengaluru to make our home his and us his family forever.

I was so livid as it was a secret between the father and daughter. I am the original dog lover in the family, but since I was working I was wary of having a pet at home because time was so precious for a working mother with two children.

But I had no choice but to give in. He was a small built blue Roan Cocker Spaniel with large beautiful eyes with blue pupils. He had long ears, black and white, and a ring of black around his eyes, like a mask. That decided his name — Zorro — like the masked Spanish crusader, though his papers called him Don, Mischief which in no way described him.

Next began the biggest test of my life — potty training, which both of us hated with equal determination. He wanted to do pee and poo wherever he thought was most suited and I was running after him with reams and reams of newspaper. I still recall clearly one evening, when I returned home tired after work, I was shocked to find that the whole house strewn with dog poo from kitchen to front door. And my husband and daughter laughed helplessly at my expression. Zorro went hiding into his basket with utmost innocence.

Zorro’s main activities were eating and sleeping of course. He would want all the things we ate like kajaya, laddu, chakli and even the vegetables, especially tomato and mangoes.

He still loves Indian food and hates eating pedigree even to this day. We are sure that in his last birth he was a food taster.

Today, many years later, we find Zorro to be our stress buster, comedian and friend for life. We have not gone on a family trip for the last eight years because we cannot leave him with friends or strangers. But we don’t feel bad about it because he is now the apple of our eyes.

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