All bark but no bite

Now mom is usually the last person who would wish harm on a dog. She only has trouble with people and four-legged reptiles, but ever since we moved in, she’s been wishing the dog next door would die.

“That’s the best thing that can happen to him,” she thinks, choking back tears and going about her business as she listens to him bark incessantly from morning to night.

Chained to his front gate or the front door seven days a week, the overgrown pup pleads with his human masters for interaction that they’re far too busy and irresponsible to bestow on him.

Mom has come to recognize his moods from the tone of his voice so well in the past month that she can do an accelerated PhD. on the subject and pass with flying colors.

“I would’ve called the cops on that family if we were in the U.S.,” she mutters, as she watches the honey-eyed thoroughbred tip his steel feeding bowl, throw it in the air like a tennis ball and jump to retrieve it until his choke chain drags him back to his concrete post. With canine optimism, he looks at his drawing room window and barks to be let inside, wagging his tail furiously even as his masters throw curses at him to shut up from inside the house.

“Lesson no. 1,” mom tells her children, “never, EVER tie a dog. That’s the best way to break his spirit.”

“But what if he bites?” they ask.

“Tie a dog up and he’s sure to become a biter,” explains mom, a fact most dog owners in India seem to be unaware of.

Complaining to the dog owners is out of the question. Recent additions to the neighborhood, mom does not wish to piss them off, especially since their home is within spitting distance of ours.

Instead, she and her little one have befriended the puppy. Every time they step out of the gate, Kuki runs up to him, and mother and daughter reach through the iron bars and stroke his soft fur.

Curling their nose against the acidic stench of urine, they whisper in his ear and smile as he arches his head and rubs his wet nose against their hands, softly licking the fingers that pet him.

“What, you never came to see him yesterday?” their maid asked, as she stood at the gate this morning.

“What don’t you ever untie him?” asked grandma, unable to control herself. A pool of mush when it comes to pets, she and grandpa have passed on their crazy genes to their daughter, who’s trying her level best to pass on the same to her children.

“Well, the workers are here,” replied the maid, pointing to the renovation in the house. “I’ll untie him after they leave.”

Exactly 12 hours later, after rupturing the entire neighborhood’s ear drums, the parched dog finally stopped barking and settled in for the night, still chained to the same spot.

“Can we take him home, Amma?” asks the little one, posing a similar question every time she spies a stray dog on the street or a scrawny cat scaling a wall.

Mom smiles at her daughter indulgently - it’s a sentiment she knows all too well.