As I jiggled the key in my front door, I looked through the frosted glass pane to see a black shadow appear, tail wagging furiously. It was a sight that I’d only been familiar with for a week. I carefully opened the door to see a wet nose poking out from behind it, and as I said her name – Millie – she bounded back from the door into the front hall and back with uncontainable joy. Simple, unbridled joy. The kind that’s impossible not to reflect. Millie, I said over and over again. Good girl. Good girl. I ruffled the fur around her neck, and she licked my wrists, before running off again, doing circles around the room, then picking up her chew toy and gnawing at it furiously. Few living creatures have expressed such excitement on seeing me.
My husband and I were taking care of our friends’ dog for 3 weeks. Having never been pet owners, we were nervous and excited about this prospect. “I’m only going to do the fun things like petting her and playing with her,” I had announced to him before she arrived. “You do all the hard work.” But of course, I found myself fully invested in Project Millie, waking up early to change the water in her bowl, taking her on walks (the first time I’d ever walked a dog – the only other animal I’d ever walked being, weirdly enough, a reindeer in Finland), learning her pee/poop routines, and generally figuring out how to care for her.
Back in India where I grew up, my neighbourhood was rife with strays, who often created enough ruckus to give dogs a bad reputation. They chased people on bikes, occasionally bit them (after which you’d need a rabies vaccine), got into fights with monkeys and roamed around in packs, causing much fear. Lots of my friends had pet dogs, whom I enjoyed meeting occasionally, but my interaction with them was largely limited. My interest in dogs really began when my mother bought a glossy-paged DK encyclopedia of the dog (that I lusted after, without knowing how expensive it was), which I used as my bible for a couple of years. I learned about breeds I’d never heard of, and sketched dog after dog in various poses.
During those years, influenced by all the books I read, I had two imaginary dogs. (A real one wasn’t an option, especially while living in a flat). One was a Rough Collie, inspired by watching lots of Lassie on TV. The other had a more flexible identity: a cocker spaniel on some days and a golden retriever on others. I walked them around the neighbourhood, whispering things like “heel” and “sit” and warning them to stay away from the tree with the yellow flowers (oleander) that someone had once told me was toxic to dogs. I talked to them at night, gave them imaginary baths and told them they were my best friends.
When I look back now, I realise I always said my best friend was something non-human. I never did tell anyone about the imaginary dogs – but I firmly believed that they were my real-est and best friends because they were imaginary, and thus could never leave me. I told everyone my best friend was music, or books. Those things were inanimate and felt ‘safe’ – they didn’t really have a say in the relationship. I could choose them as my best friends without having them choose me back.
But back to this dog, this beautiful bear of a Border Collie with her big brown eyes that could get a treat out of the most grudging person. She had simple needs: she liked to play in the evenings, be fed on time, have the liberty to skip in and out of the garden, and be taken on walks. She liked sleep but also had FOMO – the kind babies do sometimes – trying to keep her eyes open while drifting off to sleep. Not entirely unlike me, to be honest.
She liked exploring and quickly developed favourites: a twig in the garden that she liked to break into bits with her teeth, chasing after birds in the morning, barking at squirrels in the graveyard where we walked. She liked to wedge herself between the palm tree and the thick ivy on the wall in the garden, and just pensively look at the house from there. On cloudy days, she’d lie in her bed lazily, legs sprawled to one side. She liked to lay on the mat in the kitchen as I cooked, soaking up the warmth and the smells, or maybe (I’d like to imagine) just wanting company. Her ears would perk up at every little sound.
When the sun came out, you could almost see her smile. Her glossy black coat shone, silhouetted in gold against the luminous sky. She hated the rain: I once caught my husband taking her to the garden to pee with an umbrella that he held over her head while she did the job. She pawed at you from under the table for a treat: but her favourite activity was to lock eyes with you, patiently and calmly until you surrendered. A biscuit, a battle won.
I had once argued that any animal would show you affection if you were their source of food and security. Maybe that’s true. But Millie’s lavish licking of my feet (especially the day when I came home from work in tears) or her following me around room to room were signs that I could not read as anything but affection and a need to bond.
Looking at the world through a dog’s eyes offered a fresh perspective. Endlessly curious, she sniffed at moss and flowering bushes and low walls (perhaps covered in fox pee from the previous night) and the postman’s shoes and the feet of cyclists when we waited at the traffic signal – her body always following her nose. For the first time, I got to see an animal’s reaction to fireworks up close: I heard the bang and the hiss, and ran downstairs to check on her but she had disappeared. We found her curled up under the guest bed – she had crawled as far back as she could. As I gently stroked her, I could feel her heart pounding, her breath heavy. I thought of the dogs in my neighbourhood back home howling during Diwali – and my heart broke.
Of course, the day came when she had to be returned – and return she did, happily, to her original home and family and dog-friends. I miss the pitter-patter of her feet, the warmth of her body on my always-too-cold feet, and her enthusiasm when she saw me pick up her collar for her walk.
A friend’s mother – who had grown up around dogs — once told me, “Ramya, you haven’t experienced unconditional love until you’ve had a dog.” And I see what that means now. Millie wanted to love and be loved, unabashedly. There was none of the hesitation or the slight embarrassment that mars my own way of loving. There was none of the overthinking I succumb to so easily – am I too much, will I scare people off, how much of “me” should I reveal or keep hidden, how much is too soon. There was no careful strategising. There was no withholding.
One evening, a friend of mine came home to meet her. I thought she would treat him with suspicion at first, but no – she welcomed him like an old friend, with an unquestioning assumption that he loved her and was equally excited to meet her. It was an innocence that I recognized in my naive, self-unaware, self-assured younger self. Both of them spoke to each other for a few minutes in the same language: “hello friend.” It was a scene that anyone would recognize as a kind of therapy.
Millie simply asked to be loved, even demanded it. She plonked herself down near one of us in the evenings, asking for her back to be rubbed. And when that was done, she’d turn over, legs in the air, saying more, more. And we gave her more. She asked, and we submitted.
And here I was, so terrified to admit to the people I loved that I wanted and needed them.
Having a dog, even if temporarily, made me confront my own longing for something to love and be needed. For one of the first times in my life I felt truly… not lonely. Like the thing I wanted to love was here in flesh and blood, reflecting the intensity of emotions back in the simplest way. The reciprocity of it was stunning. For three weeks, I loved her without hesitation, knowing she would have to leave eventually. A lesson in so many ways.
And today, after a week of her leaving, it has struck me that we’ll never really figure out if she liked us or not. I sometimes wonder if she had a good time. We’ll never really know if she misses us or not.
But I know, in the way you know when love exists between two people. I think about her settling at my feet, resting the full weight of her body, and I have confirmation. I feel it in my bones.
