Sunday, December 10, 2006

Raichur- It's a dogs life

These dog shows are unnatural things, I tell you, unnatural.
They’ve had banners hung up all over Raichur announcing the 2nd grand dog show and I’d never been to one, so naturally I had to go. I hadn’t given it much thought except that it would be interesting to see what breeds Raichur had; and it seemed Raichur folk must be really serious about their dogs to warrant a full-fledged dog show.
But what madness it is to bring together about fifty thoroughly pampered top dogs into one small enclosure and then not have the bloody sense to keep them apart or at least start the damned event on time. I had harrowing time for the hour and a half I waited for this thing to start. Dogs straining at their leashes, marking territory chair, pole, and fence, aggressive, intimidated, all kinds of excited and generally manic. My heart must have skipped approximately three and a half dozen beats but the owners were inexplicably unperturbed. They just lounged around calling languid ‘stay’ and ‘sit’ commands exchanging details of pedigree and trainers (I had a tough time believing any of those deranged specimens had had any training) source, cost and number of awards. All of this is interesting enough to overhear, if one is not strung like a violin string. One of them did not move an inch till her dog almost had its tail bitten off. You’d think they would look after award winning dogs better, huh?
Then the priceless part. There was actually a free anti-rabies vaccination camp on the grounds where the dogs were taken for their shot - Before the show! Now I don’t know too much about dogs but I would imagine that their nerves would be a little strained by being hauled off for an injection apart from all the madness.
At this point I’d had enough and I needed to leave in any case. So I did not actually get to see the show, and now I’ll never know how that woman with her Dalmatian pups (whose Doberman won some prize last year) fared this time, and if Prince cleaned up in time, if those Boxers were any good and if the Great Dane I was rooting for did well and what a dog show is really like.

5 comments:

Sheetal said...

Raichur has its own dog show? With fifty entrants! Somehow this changes my idea of small town India.

I hope you have pictures.

Anonymous said...

Ayyo.. how much enthu u have..

the 24 days extra that i have must have made the diffrence..

Shweta said...

Sister: yes I do but they are a little blurred because I my hands, as you can imagine, were not perfectly steady.

Cousin: What! you are telling me that your enthusiam flags sometimes between conducting high-power meetings and trotting across the Sydney habour bridge and such, huh?

Anonymous said...

Was Dharmendra the chief guest?

Anonymous said...

Ayya Kutthe ki dum, Whatyer saying yaa! Raichur is not that gaya guzara!