Yoyo-nama

(The Chronicle of a Foundling turned Dictator)

Instalment 1

It was a most random beginning. He came pre-owned and pre-named to us.

I had heard that someone nearby had acquired a new Lahasa Apso puppy who had been named Yoyo. What an odd name, I thought. Not one I’d go for if I was to name a dog. The first time that I clapped eyes on him, it seemed that he was no Apso, but more some kind of Pom, likely to grow into something yappy and hyper and annoying like the Hum Aapke Hain Kaun dog. That he developed a most respectable wroof and a guttural growl that came deep from his chest, and not a tinny yap-snap, would soon be revealed to us. Another thing that he clearly did not have, were Pomeranian itty-bitty paws. He grew broad round ones that looked like polar bear paws, left an imprint like a big flower, and felt like the tread of a buffalo if he stepped on you, even though he grew into just about an 18 kg dog. But all that was later.

He was about 5weeks old when I first saw him. The next time that I saw him, some weeks later, I saw him in silhouette and I remember wondering, wow, a Scotty? Not so common here in India.

The Scotty most of us have seen is as an illustration of Buster in Enid Blyton’s Five Findouters and Dog series, then Snowy in Asterix when we were a little older; and then when firmly in adulthood, we became familiar with the two Scotties of the Black & White Whisky label.        

Why was this new puppy in our colony visible in silhouette?  Because he was standing with two kids, stock still, intently waiting for their school bus, squinting against the morning sun. When the bus arrived, his head did a kind of kathakali dancer left to right, right to left up down down up; and at the same time his body did an opposite right to left, left to right. These adjustments were being made as he judged the optimum distance and position he needed, to take a jump into the narrow three-stair entrance to the bus and sail off to wherever the kids were going. When they shooed him off and the bus roared off without him, he looked most puzzled. For all his entire long life, Yoyo has rarely doubted his welcome anywhere, and so this boorish going off to school and leaving him behind, puzzled him rather than hurt him. As the dust from the departing school bus settled, he went back towards his gate, waddling off moodily. I called his name; he looked over his shoulder, and I crouched low on the ground and called him – something most puppies cannot resist. He tucked his ears back and bounded across to me on short-stocky legs. In a few seconds he was flopped on his back, and because I did not instantly rub his belly, he gave me a helpful nip on my fingers. This was possibly the first of the many helpful nips, smacks, warning growls and imperious barks that he would rain down on us over the next many years when we were derelict in our duty of belly rubs, ear scratching, treat-tossing, etc. But that was later.

That day, it was late December, I went home and told my flatmate at the time, Mathangi, about this new creature. The next morning we were out there to watch him standing patiently for the bus, readjusting his entire body to be able to this time catch that bus. Yet again he was shooed off amongst much giggling and there he stood, looking most non-plussed at the departing bus refusing to let him board. 

We had begun to hear some rumbling grumblings from his owner, about being ‘cheated’ by the breeder, and having paid for an Apso but got some odd fellow instead. Back at my desk, I looked up Scottish Terrier, and the images that came up were not exactly like him. But on one site, a chart of all Terrier types opened up, and there was our Yoyo. (Dangerous territory, already we were thinking of him as Our.) He seemed to be a West Highland Terrier; a breed we had never seen or even heard of.

More explorations on the internet, and the pictures that showed up of Westies were amazingly like him. None of these here are him, and yet they are so him:

One phrase stuck in my mind, when I read up on the breed: A lot of personality packed into a little dog. I and many other people would have reason to experience cartloads of personality again and again over the next 15 years.

We would see him wandering about aimlessly in his lane, investigating this and that, sometimes pouncing on moths or cockroaches, running up to passersby, who would either pet him or shriek in horror, and he would look back at them puzzled, and take himself off in a moody manner.

One day, a few weeks later, Yoyo simply decided to follow me home, 5 houses away. The aloof 8 yr old mongrel who I had then, Snoopy, took a very dim view of this incursion, shelved his usually philosophical and stoic stand on most things, and received him with growls, hackles raised, smelling him all over.  When his drop-ins became frequent, Snoopy would either give him the once-over or ignore him completely, after rolling his eyes upon seeing him. Yoyo would quickly and cannily flip over on his back in complete supplication, allow himself to be sniffed over by Snoopy at the entrance, and then gain entry. He would try to play with Snoopy, take the ignoring in his little stride, sometimes he would walk right under the standing Snoopy, treating him like some kind of overhead bridge or arch, to enter our yard. Once safely in, he walked about solemnly, inspecting everything, going around the yard, climbing up to the top floor, batting and boxing, growling and backing and advancing on himself in the long mirror that he encountered. We would try to scoop him up to take him back to his house, but he would, all 10 kgs of him, stand firmly rooted to the ground, unbudgeable. Or go completely limp and become a deadweight. Or turn into an almost fluid puddle on the ground. The lady who kept house for me would call out, no, he’s playing statue, we cant lift him. Or she would say, ‘saandla’ – meaning he’s spilt, like milk on the floor. For such a small dog, he was always difficult to lift. Too much personality.

The shine had totally gone off the ‘new puppy’ for his first household that bought him, and complaints about him decimating a cricket bat signed by Sachin Tendulkar Himself, into tiny matchstick sized pieces, eating up the corner of an entire giant 200 page dinosaur encyclopaedia, gnawing his way through sofa cushions, or climbing on to a bed and batting and scratching at the fish tank, etc would come to me from the amused bemused watchman driver maid from his house. It was a household ill-prepared to own a dog.

After this, he would often come in through a small gap in my gate regularly. Once here, he would romp around in abandon in my yard, on his broad little paws, like a polar bear cub. This would include rushing angrily after overhead birds, bees as well as aircraft that dared to fly over what he too was beginning to think of as ‘his’ airspace. (We were falling in love, clearly.) Or take a quick whirlwind tour of the house or make it known to me that if cheese was being grated, he was in the queue for some. This he would do by turning up from wherever he was, into my tiny kitchen, with what we would later come to call the cheese-nail-click. Whether he stuck his nails out extra so that they would click on the floor, is not clear, but this much I know, that sometimes even if I was not grating cheese, I would think of doing it, because I heard that particular clicketyclick behind me in the kitchen. After amusing himself for a bit, getting thoroughly petted and cossetted by my then flatmate Mathangi, he would then trot off back to his first owners, at his meal time.

One redeeming feature of that home was that, I was told, he was fed well, with plenty of non-veg leftovers. He was now not much of a pet dog, with the family not too interested in him anymore. His meal was served by one of the kitchen staff, after which, we were told, he would enter her quarters where she rested for the afternoon, and proceed to gnaw at her hair, justforfun while she slept on the floor. He was kind of indulged, in the outhouse, going by these little tidbits of information about him that would filter through to me from the amused and bemused watchman, driver, domestic help attached to his owner’s house.

His hangouts at my home began to increase in frequency and duration, much to Snoopy’s irritation, who would not let him enter without a growl, raised hackles, and a thorough once-over, to which Yoyo submitted himself gamely. On days that I was not at home to let him in, neighbours would report that ‘that dog’ had come, peered in through the gate, loitered around outside for a while, and gone off a little dejected after being told to bugger off by Snoopy.

A few weeks into these comings and goings, he abruptly stopped showing up. The news that filtered through to us was that his owner had suddenly decided to take charge of him, and turn him into a watch dog, and instead of letting him roam the lanes, had locked him up, tied at the back of the house. We once saw him being walked, frog-marched, really, past our place, and he was trying to look towards my gate but was firmly asked to keep this head and eyes straight ahead.

Wanting to stay out of emotional entanglements, I allowed myself a few moments of sadness about this, and pulled down the shutter of my mind with a decisive rumble. I was at the time in a going-nowhere relationship, after the end of my first marriage, but had not seen (or was refusing to see) the limits and limitations of this non-starter. For this rather amorphous and nebulous relationship to crystallize into something more definite, I had decided I needed to stay all nimble-footed and ready to merge with another person and not get anchored-weighed down with a second dog in my life.

But Yoyo had other plans. And thank god for that; he was to subsequently stand between me and a few other serious perils, human and reptilian, in his lifetime. But more on that, later.

(next instalment of Yoyo-nama on Friday, 8 June 2018)