Pets help us navigate the ups and downs of life, provide emotional support during challenging times, and teach us invaluable lessons about empathy, responsibility, and compassion. In this story, one can explore the fascinating ways in which our furry friends enhance our mental and physical well-being, boost our social connections, and even open new doors of opportunity.
Dr Uma Sushmita Perepa has always liked pets especially cats and dogs, as have her father and brother. They did not have a pet when they were little because her mother was not keen on having one in the house. In the year 2015, their society’s security had a friendly Pomeranian named Honey. For the love of pets in her heart, Sushmita used to bring him home to play and eat. Slowly all of them including her mother, felt him take his rightful place in the family.
Honey would follow them on their walks, come at mealtimes, and stand quietly in front of the door during cold nights to be allowed in. Twice or thrice, Sushmita felt him calling to them and opened the door in the middle of the night and there he would be, happy to be noticed. He would then walk in and make himself comfortable.
Eventually, everyone in the family got so attached to him that when they knew they had a change in the security personnel, it affected them the most because they knew it meant that Honey would be leaving with them too. Luckily, they were only moving a little further from their home and they still saw him a lot. Then one day, as all good things come to an end, so did Honey’s time on earth with his human companions.
“The pain was unbearable. We felt like it would never be the same again. Then my brother suggested we adopt another Pomeranian and that is how we got our Honey in another body. Our second dog friend Lucky is an Indian breed who was abandoned by our neighbour when he moved. He would still wait for them every day and his pain troubled us, so we took him in. He took his time to accept us as his family but warmed up to us in a few days,” shared Sushmita.
Dogs have their own way of identifying stress and anxiety in their human companions. Honey and Nani would sit with their human companions and comfort them in a way only they could do in times like that. Both the furry friends helped them grow sensitive and more human with their presence in their lives so much that any cruelty to the voiceless creatures moved them greatly.
During the lockdown, Sushmita and her father used to feed a couple of strays in their area regularly. “Once we found a dog missing for 3 days straight and that’s when we enquired with the neighbors about it and they said the municipality van has taken him along with a few other strays. This gave me sleepless nights. Because once a stray has been captured, it has to be treated, vaccinated, and left in the same place from where it has been picked. But that had not happened.”
So, Sushmita had gone to the shelter to enquire about the missing dog but the effort was futile. “Our happy stray who wagged its tail every time it saw its feeders was not to be found and no one would give the details of what they did to it or where it was relocated, which was against the law anyway,” concluded Dr Sushmita.
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