Not Without My Dog

MK Raghavendra compares Bengaluru’s one apartment, one dog policy disallowing strays to our caste system where mongrels are outcastes

Bengaluru, October 30, 2019: dog is ‘Man’s best friend’ because it loves its owner unconditionally. Even parents love their children conditionally in the sense that they have expectations from them; a mother, perhaps because of the biological connection, tends to see her child as an extension of herself rather than someone independent.

A dog is different in that even cruelty on its owner’s part will not see it ‘disloyal’. This eulogy assumes that canine behaviour is driven by the same impulses as human behaviour, love and loyalty having the same connotations as among humans, and this is naïve. Dogs are less endowed with free will and it is the choice humans have to love or not to love, to be MK Raghavendra compares Bengaluru’s one apartment, one dog policy disallowing strays to our caste system where mongrels are outcastes loyal or not to be that makes love and loyalty virtues. A dog naturally exhibits love and loyalty towards certain objects but it does not decide on the objects morally; it can be heartless towards others.

It is this canine ‘amorality’ that human beings exploit when they use dogs for security/ guard/ attack purposes, when they become terrifying. Whatever dog-ownership bylaws are devised by the municipal authorities in any city should hence take into account all these characteristics of the dog, including the dangers to humans from strays. The BBMP, the municipal authority in Bengaluru, has not been effective in the matter of controlling the city’s stray dog population. The inhuman method of killing stray dogs has been stopped, but the sterilization that has replaced it has not been effective enough and there have been instances of strays attacking babies and even killing them.

As may be expected, it is the poor who bear the brunt of the stray dog menace. Instead of adopting these stray dogs, most people wanting pets choose to spend huge amounts and there is a thriving market for exotic breeds, often bred under horrific conditions. I have made it a point to keep strays as pets and my pet mongrel Baha was discovered as a pup rummaging in the garbage on a Bengaluru side road. I cannot imagine a more affectionate and entertaining pet, eager to listen in on Pet dogs are usually acquired by people as a mark of status and the owner of an exotic breed refused to talk to me at the vet’s because my dog was a mongrel.

Pet dogs are usually acquired by people as a mark of status and the owner of an exotic breed refused to talk to me at the vet’s because my dog was a mongrel. It was apparently beneath his dignity to talk to the owner of a pet not of proper birth. It would seem that India’s caste system has been extended to the dog community and mongrels are outcastes!

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