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Do you care?

Is it easy to love thy neighbour's dog?

Barking dogs seldom bite. That's a truism (the OUP dictionary defines seldom as: almost never. Notice the dangerous qualifier, almost). But who will tell that to a person living in an apartment who has a dog-lover for a neighbour?

Try telling that to K. Ratnakar as he waits for the lift on the fourth floor of an highrise, where a huge Alsatian lives in an apartment next to the lift. Even at 12 in the night, he stops near a pillar, looks furtively at the door of the dog lover, listens for the sound of the escalator door opening and only then does he step forward to press the button.

Or try telling that to Bhavika as her neighbour takes his cocker spaniel for a morning walk while she waits for the school bus. The moment she sees the dog on leash, she jumps on to the shop porch out of sheer fright.

Dogs wag their tail as a friendly gesture, cats wag theirs as a sign of fright and their willingness for a fight. There is little difference between claws and paws and between cats and dogs if you don't love the four-legged furry creatures.

Debates aplenty

As more and more apartment owners discover the therapeutic benefits of pets of the fanged variety, not everyone is squealing with delight.

If the housing colony secretary's job pits one section of flat owners against another set, a more divisive debate is created by dogs. And all the debate is not irrational.

When the owners of these dogs take them for a walk, most of the passers-by try to give a wide berth to the dog and the owners. "No. Don't worry, our dog is well trained; it doesn't attack people. It only looks dangerous but in reality, is harmless," says the lean owner on the verge of tipping over, who has a dog with huge fangs drooling and straining at the leash. What she actually means is: "My dog hasn't bitten me. Hopefully, it will not bite you. So why are you afraid."

Not everyone is afraid of the bite. Many apartment owners, who have people with dogs for neighbours, are put off by the seemingly well-trained dog's poop and its loss of bladder control the moment it gets into the elevator. It doesn't require a Doctor Dolittle to decipher that the dog lovers actually use their expensive pedigreed dog as hand candy.

The dogs have hair that is not brushed, worse they smell like moth-balled blankets left in the rain. And when these uncared-for dogs are taken for a walk on a smooth floor, there is a screeching sound. Obviously, the dog doesn't have access to a carpet or a floor where it can scratch the floor silly. The result: long toenails that hurt the paws and leave the dogs psychologically traumatised.

The neighbour's dog really gets people's goat when it wails like a pack animal. "We don't hate the dog. We pity it as it is left locked up for long hours. And we have a cultural feeling that a dog's wail is an ill-omen," says Pramila Naidu, whose neighbours leave behind a Lhasa Apso at 8 a.m. and return only at 7 p.m.

SERISH NANISETTI

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