Peter, the Dog

Now, I know Peter is not a dog-like name. As a matter of fact I don’t know what one should call a dog- Bark Twain , perhaps? Or if one had Latin one might call him Pontius Pilate. Well, I have only got a little bread- and- butter Latin- just enough to tell my students that aqua is water, best when taken straight, but alas, no classical Latin. So he is Peter to me. Peter is a tough canine with the characteristic of being able to leap six or seven feet in the air from a standing position as though he were operated by springs. He has this peculiar habit of lifting up a hind leg for a few steps, then putting it down again. I was told that it’s nothing, just a mannerism but I have my own doubts; it looks more like arthritics to me. Some days, while sleeping, he makes the most pathetic whining sounds accompanied by hollow groans and his paws would keep working as though he was running away from some evil curse from a darker age.  Peter really, really doesn't love the time of his bath.  

To be honest, he is very rarely bathed, and when he is, it has nothing to do with the outside temperature. In fact he is bathed more in the winter. After the bath I use ordinary dog powder, sometimes puffing out huge amounts of it into the air causing great discomfort to his nasal system, but he hardly ever complains. He knows and accepts the fact that humans are a complicated and difficult species, surviving in an imperfect world of joy and sorrow mingled. Like all knowledgeable dogs he too knows that Flipkart and Amazon do have canine after- shave lotions and puppy deodorants but has never made any demands for them. He is much too familiar with my fiscal state of affairs. But his doggedness to attend my every lecture gets me very balled up. There must be millions of places he could be having lot more fun but being the dog he is, he prefers to sit at the back of the class listening to my every axioms, sometimes transfixed, at times utterly bemused.

To his credit he can express more with his tail and eyes in minutes than I can with my tongue in hours. Whenever I get the feeling that my students do not appear to comprehend my English I employ the traditional method of communication employed by English teachers all over India. I raise my voice. The curious theory that an eccentric language like English can be rendered understandable by increasing the volume at which it is spoken is one of the great mysteries continually haunting my Peter. All he can do is wag his bushy tail dejectedly.  The one lesson he enjoys the most is prepositions. The uses of ‘in’, ‘on’, ‘at’ etc have him wholeheartedly awestruck.  His grey eyes, prominent and large, with a strange kind of watery brightness in them would twinkle slyly when I tell the class that there is considerable difference in meaning between ‘He lied to her’ and ‘He lied with her. ’I never mention Zoology when he is around simply because it’s the scariest subject. It says that a dog’s life is shorter than a human’s life.

The arithmetic is ruthless. If you love a dog, you will lose a dog and you will suffer the pain and agony that death brings. Peter is over twelve and I know that it won’t be long before he departs for that great litter box in the sky.  Does he know about it? We may never know what exactly goes on inside the mind of a dog, but it would be outright stupid and arrogant of us to assume we are the only species capable of feelings. Milan Kundera has expressed it in the loveliest way, “Dogs are our link to paradise. They don’t know evil or jealousy or discontent. To sit with a dog on a hill side on a glorious afternoon is to be back in Eden, where doing nothing was not boring- it was sheer peace. ” But that doesn’t mean dogs know what death is. I don’t think they can anticipate death in the way we can. Their grief must be different: it must be simply about loss. If, just in case Zoology makes an exception for me, and I depart before him, will he miss me????