Category: News Bark

Ishmeet Chandiok is not only one of the first to launch a wet dog food line called Harley’s Corner, but also an expert on food that appeals to dogs.

Ishmeet Chandiok is not only one of the first to launch a wet dog food line called Harley’s Corner, but also an expert on food that appeals to dogs. Ishmeet gets candid on how to ensure our pooches get a gourmet food experience. The genial giant, wears a tee that says pets are people too, which is further proof that he loves to be called the dog chef. “It is my social media identity. A project that started in Mumbai, Harley’s Corner is soon opening doors in Bengaluru following Ishmeet’s recent shift to the Garden City. Although he has been “a Mumbai boy all my life,” Ishmeet says the move to Bengaluru was a long time coming. “I love dogs, food and bikes. That is why the first dog I adopted is called Harley, after the bike. “I have been around pets for a long time. Dad was a Sikh and mum, a Parsi, so I have had the best of both worlds, as far as food and wit is concerned,” he laughs and adds: “They both had pets, so I grew up with a soft corner for dogs.”

It was during his tenure with Kingfisher that he met Harley and his life changed for the better. “We adopted him from a construction site. He was part of a litter of six pups and the naughtiest of the lot. Whenever we visited the site, he was the first to come greet and play. We didn’t choose him, Harley chose us.” Harley is the CTO (Chief Tasting Officer) of the company. “If he eats it, it goes into production. I put a small menu together. At one point, I was known as ‘Bombay’s Doggie Dabbawalla’. I used the dabbawallas to deliver food daily. Once I hit a larger number, I knew I couldn’t do this from home. That’s when I looked at packaged food. Now my products have a shelf life of one year with no preservatives or additives and can be shipped.

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In a unique initiative, West Bengal’s Minister-in-Charge of Higher Education and School Education Department Partha Chatterjee is building a hospital for dogs in memory of his wife.

The construction work for this hospital is already underway and the minister has reportedly begun the preparations for opening the hospital in Kolkata. The hospital will be named Babli Chatterjee Memorial Pet Hospital, in the name of his wife, who breathed her last in July 2017. Talking about this initiative, Chatterjee said that his wife was a dog lover and he thought of building the hospital to keep her memories alive. “My wife was a true dog lover. She used to really care about them. She would take ailing dogs to doctors, and ensure medication for them. This gave me a thought to build a hospital for dogs to keep alive the memories of my wife,” he added. “There are six dogs in our family now that include two St. Bernards, Golden Retriever and Pug. As long she was fit, she used to take care of them that including feeding them, giving them medicines and taking them to vets. Even when she went to sleep at night, her pets were her companions.” The minister said that at times when he returned home late from meetings, he was forced to sleep on the floor as his pet dogs would have already slept on his bed. He added that there is a lack of veterinary hospitals in Kolkata and his wife used to talk about this a lot of time. “There is lack of veterinary hospitals in Kolkata. My wife often used to talk about this to me. Members of trust are constantly in touch with me and several veterinary doctors. I have asked them to ensure the best of facilities for dogs. I have also asked them to speed things up,” Chatterjee said. “The trust has a plot of 17 acres near Baghajatin railway station in south Kolkata, where the hospital will be set up,” he said, refusing to reveal the cost of the project.

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