In fact, they’re so big that they need a space as big as your bed to sprawl at the end of the day. At Gyaneshwor, there is this small park around the corner from where I live, the only place apart from the street where you can walk your dog. [break]
It stretches, at best, to a couple hundred meters from end to end. Hardly the kind of space needed to let loose an animal that was bred on the mountains.
I bring this conversation up the next evening at a rather formal evening where I have been invited to speak on the importance of ‘Relevance of Financial Planning.’
The rather important looking man next to me tells me I’m wrong and that there is no point in getting a breed like that in this city. What I need is a Labrador. Or a German Shepherd. Apparently, he’s ordered a Saint Bernard.
Of course, I understand there is a need among the rich to show off their wealth in the most obvious manner. And once they’ve displayed their designer homes in the pages of glossy magazines, driven up to the door in a ridiculously expensive Volkswagen Beetle, carried their oversized, logo-covered handbags to every wedding party, there is little more that makes a visible statement.
So they get a dog. Not a cat, not a parrot; but a dog. Cats and birds don’t need to be taken down in the lift from their fancy apartments and bungalows for a walk twice a day.
As far as I see it, the walk is a necessity more for the master than for the dog. For without that, the neighbors can’t gaze in wonder at this magnificent animal that has taken residence in their building. Of course, the master will never walk the dog. It’s always the servant.
In fact, I doubt the master or mistress of the house will have anything to do with the rearing of the pet. Most of them, I’m pretty sure, can barely pronounce the dog’s name, let alone its pedigree.
Some months later, I meet the man with the designer taste in dogs again. Before I can ask, he launches into a description about his life since he bought it.
The stares it gets when he’s taken for a walk around the city and the number of people who ask him where he got the beast and where they can get one. And he tells me proudly of the costs related to his acquisition.
The police trainer, the pedigree food, the servant whose sole purpose is to groom the dog twice a day, the fancy cosmetics required to keep that coat glowing like the pride on his face. He reels off the bills he has to bear, including one for a consultant in Narayan Gopal Chowk who specializes in looking after expats’ dogs.
He then proceeds to ask how my new house is coming up and then asks me how I’m managing my income.
I consider telling him that my finances are none of his business but remember just in time who I’m speaking to, so I let it pass.
I also consider telling him that he has a dog for the wrong reasons, but let that pass, too. Instead, I tell him why I have four dogs. Because they fill a hole in my soul. But that’s the one thing he doesn’t understand.
And also because the average dog is a nicer person than the average person.
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