Four-legged Foodies - Part I

Four-legged foodies – part I
Who's best friend did you say !!??

Indu my sister-in-law stays in a house with numerous pets and three other humans.
Indu is fond of animals: She has a flock of parrots and budgerigars, a school of fish, and half a dozen rabbits, living in the outside yard with a decorative pond ( the fish live in the pond, not the birds), and six dogs patrolling on the inside. Actually one of the dogs is slightly more mobile than a coconut tree due to his arthritis but more than makes up for it in sheer bark power and bulk and is about 12,000 years old. He may in fact be medically dead. But dogs don't get all weepy over their physical disabilities. This particular dog, his name is Dobi since he vaguely resembles a Doberman on steroids, - maintains a productive routine, which consists of every now and then getting to his feet (this takes about an hour) and wandering around until he bumps into something, which he sniffs. If he thinks it is food, he tries to eat it; if it bites back, he knows it's one of the other dogs.

The other dogs are more active; their job is to wait for people to open the gate, then bark loudly and angrily to communicate the fact that, based on their extensive experience as dogs, the people at the gate are bad and somebody should bite them. Dogs are deeply suspicious of anybody using a gate. Even if, when the gate is opened, it turns out that the people standing there know the dogs, and in fact live in the house, the dogs will continue barking at them for a few seconds, in case it's some sort of a trick.
Dogs behave this way because they are extremely vigilant (I am using "vigilant" instead of "dumb").Indu also has a small, nervous dog named Pixie who is so vigilant that she would be classified on the animal intelligence scale as category: "mineral". A low-lying cabinet with glass doors is in her path out the door and Pixie notices her reflection every time she passes it. Pixie reacts as though her reflection is an entire gang of street urchins, barking, growling and running around in small alarmed, circles to let everyone know that her reflection is bad and she will bite it ( she rarely does). After looking behind the cabinet and not seeing another dog she calms down. But the moment her reflection reappears, all the current drains out of Pixies' mental battery again, and WHOA! RED ALERT! Pixie goes off again like a small, fur-brained, defective car alarm. It is not a quiet household. But you can be sure it is a very secure household, thanks to Pixies' vigilance.

But here's a story that happened at a friends house with an equally vigilant dog, a daschund named Spike. They were having a nice dinner at home, and during this dinner Spike kept going to a window and growling. Nobody paid any attention, because dogs are always growling – maybe at the moon, maybe at the fish , maybe at the Reserve Bank – who can say?

After dinner everyone, including the dog, went into the other room to have dessert and watch the Indian cricket team play an important one day international match against Bangla Desh. Actually the women watched the game; the men actively controlled the outcome by shouting at the TV. The dog watched the dessert.

Through skillful team shouting, the men won the game, and everyone agreed it had been a pleasant evening. Then the women discovered that their purses, which had been left by the dining-room window, were gone. While they had been shouting at the TV, a thief had sneakily reached in and stolen them. He had obviously been watching them through the window. The growling dog had been telling them this.

When they discovered the theft, each person reacted in a different way. One called the police; another smoked a cigarette, even though he had technically quit. Another decided to go and look around the back for clues. Perhaps he would even find the burglar! Then remembering his karate classes he would wet his pants.

He was called into the house by his wife who informed him that the cops were on their way, and that he was being too vigilant by wandering around the house in the dark.

The police came quickly. Needless to say, the dog barked at them. They later concluded that the reason the dog did not bark at the thief was that (a) it was busy watching the dessert, and (b) the thief stood at the window, which apparently is not a violation of dog security rules.

The next day the purses were found in a garbage disposal minus cash -
but their credit cards, drivers' licenses, makeup, tissues, pharmaceuticals, hairdryers, washing machines, and other stuff that women keep in their purses were intact.

We can all learn valuable lessons from this on home security, namely:

1.We should not only lock our doors, but our windows as well.
2.Dogs will give you a lot of "false alarms," but every now and then they may really know what they're growling or barking about.
3.Or maybe not.
4.Experts will agree that if you really want peace of mind and your home to be safe, fish are worthless.