Yoyo-nama (The Chronicle of a Foundling turned Dictator)

Chapter 4

Yoyo had come to us without the benefit of any rabies and other shots, no deworming either, we gathered. (Talk about unplanned and then unwanted dog-owning! – Mathangi and I said to each other in grim dismay about his recent past.)  So pretty soon, a vet visit had to be scheduled. Both my earlier dogs, Annie the boxer, and Snoopy the Mumbai street-find, had always been a vet’s delight, taking shots, gland cleanings, teeth and ear clean ups, nail-clipping, medication with grace and forbearance. ‘A model patient’, as the various vets who attended to them over the 14 years of their respective lives, always said. The two of them were greeted with much joy and hugging at any vet’s clinic over the years. For their vets and their assistants, it was a break from the daily snarling, pulling, barking, growling, and frantic resistance and struggle that most of their patients put up. With my two dogs, none of this ever happened. No muzzles and restraints were needed on Annie and Snoopy, ever. This meant, that for the previous 10-12 years I had been lulled into thinking that going to the vet was a routine chore.

Yoyo turned that upside down from his very first visit, to the very last one that he had in his life. Most vets and their helpers were caught off their guard because Yoyo did not look like a nasty-tempered dog or a very strong one. He looked like any practised person could quickly overpower him, immobilize him for a few seconds, and deftly do what was needed.

Never, no way. Not till the very end.

On our very first visit to the vet, we got off the car and headed to the small open enclosure where other patients waited. Yoyo took one look/whiff, and got wind of the fact that this was not good news at all. Smells like trouble. He about-turned and pulled with all his might away and towards my car parked across the road. When I wouldn’t comply, he twisted this way and that, tried to sever the leash with his teeth and then with both front paws-claws.  He then did a double-flip, lateral, and then vertical, thereby almost choking himself. After a huge struggle he also managed to slip out of his collar and dash across the very busy street towards my car, causing two-wheelers to brake and teeter and cars to skid to a halt and people to shake angry fists at me while my house-help, the up-until-then in-love-with-Yoyo Vijayabai and I stood helplessly and ineffectually on the road, trying to look like responsible and apologetic citizens. This is when we learnt that for Yoyo, we would have to get a choker-chain. Collars were only for wussy obedient dogs, apparently.

Subsequent visits always involved the vet coming to the car and trying to muzzle him, which was almost never accomplished. He would then get someone to yank Yoyo’s choke-chain in a way that his face was scrunched up briefly against the seat or dashboard for a few seconds, and manage to jab a calming-down injection into him.

The sight of this infamous chain usually had most dog owners standing around tsk-tsking at us while we wound it around a seat or some object that would hold out to Yoyo’s angry struggle. We would then sit around and watch his internal tussle against the sedative shot, trying his damnedest to not let go and relax, and to remain on high alert. He fought that sedative mightily. Always, thence-forth, any vet would have to leave his other patients, come and check in the car to see if Yoyo had become calm enough to allow him to vaccinate him, or to anaesthetize him, if his teeth or glands needed cleaning, nails needed trimming. Why don’t you use a muzzle, people around would ask us, puzzled. In answer to which the vet would demonstrate how impossible it was to get a muzzle on to him. People would simply fall back in shock and awe at the massive whirling storm this attempt would create. Suddenly that choker chain would not look like such a cruel option, to them.

We tried out many different vets at many different locations, including ones that came home, come vaccination time, hoping that Yoyo would not suspect our motives as we approached a new place, but the story everywhere was the same. Vets for miles and miles around knew of him, his reputation having spread quickly, and I suspect they avoided us after witnessing even once, the giant tamasha that he could produce. There was only one rare occasion when Yoyo was tricked into wearing a muzzle. Here he is, below, in full-on Hannibal the Cannibal mode.

It was funny, sad and exhausting, all rolled into one, these vet visits. Luckily for us all, Yoyo enjoyed a basic robustness, which meant that vet visits were soon settled into a ritual that had to be braved but once a year for his shots. As for all the other services that normal dogs allow vets to deliver, I had developed some counter aggression tactics, so that I could bully him into coming to me and allowing his teeth to be cleaned, nails to be clipped, be bathed and towel dried, groomed, and dewormed.

Oral medicines, like the deworming tabs, he would simply not allow me to shove down his throat. Every four months, for the deworming tablet, the strategy would have to be changed.  You got a pedha, powdered the med thoroughly, mixed it with the pedha and reconstituted it. This would work once. The next time, he would sniff suspiciously, and simply reject it, and stalk off in high dudgeon. He loved pedhas, so a contaminated pedha, he felt, was a really mean cut on our part.

Come medicating time, it was important to come up with elaborate ruses, which included laced tandoori chicken, doctored cheese spread, spiked mutton stock, and suchlike. When he got older, we simply gave up on deworming him that regularly. When I recently heard about little beef pouches that you can buy in the US, in which medicines can be pushed in, it was after Yoyo had gone. And anyway, we thought, the SOF would have smelt a rat most probably. He acquired the title SOF when he was quite young – Suspicious Old Fart – because of his habit of first sniffing out, after much stretching of the neck and twitching of nose and whiskers, any unscheduled tidbit that you offered him. Not for him the gulp first think later trustingness of other less complex canines.

Quite early on, a few weeks into his coming fully into my home, a visiting friend had warned me that if I let him get away with simply not listening to me, it would be very difficult to take care of him. I would need to handle him with a firm hand and tone, for his own good, she cautioned me. So this soon involved playing good cop bad cop, several times in one day. This worked to have him come readily to me when I called, instead of his earlier ‘Try and make me’ stance.

A few weeks after he came to stay, my friend and one of Yoyo’s favourite people, Bonnie (Nilanjan Mukherjee), dropped in and he too advised me strongly to take charge as Yoyo’s dog-owner and not dog-fan. He noted that Yoyo was fast taking over the household, bending the power equation completely in his favour, and basically had me wrapped around his little finger. Though much charmed by Yoyo’s looks and demeanour (the book cover portrait of Yoyo is by him), Bonnie warned me plainly: “This gorgeous haraami is going to be a handful very soon, and if you don’t want this to end in tragedy where you’re giving him away or keeping him tied, because he destroys stuff, snaps at people, refuses to come when called, does not drop something that he has picked up to destroy, sits wherever he likes, steals food, refuses medication, and generally becomes a complete law unto himself, you’ll have to do better than just bleating at him.” This was his firm advice, in these exact words.

Up until then, he had seen my interacting with the saintly Snoopy – my dog who was now in his middle years, and was also just naturally obedient. And before him, there had been the boxer Annie, a regal and stately sort, but not at all above eating entire  unattended mithai dabbas and deftly pressing the pedals of garbage pails if there were bones in there, and eating blocks of Kraft cheese off the dining table, eating it all in one sitting foil, carton and all.

Now Bonnie had been watching me trying to ineffectually get Yoyo not to sniff and try to inhale our tea biscuits sitting on a low coffee table. He politely asked me if he could demonstrate how Yoyo would need to be handled, rolled up a newspaper, gave it to me in my hands and said make a loud noise on the floor with it near him to stop him from whatever he is doing.

A few minutes later, the occasion arose, as Yoyo began gnawing at the leg of the table (a beautiful old swing turned into a table, with the addition of sturdy teak legs). I shouted STOP THAT – to which he just looked back with laughter in his eyes. I then banged the rolled up paper on the floor and shouted STOP IT. I could see that Yoyo was impressed, but he quickly tried to recover the balance by showing me his teeth (an enormous impressive set in a small dog).

With Bonnie coaching me from across the room, I stepped away, crouched, and called him to me in a stentorian voice, IKDAY YAY TABADTOP – COME HERE THIS INSTANT.

This was the turning point. Utterly impressed at the sheer volume of my voice and determination in my tone, he hastily covered his gum-teeth show, and ran out from under the table and turned into a puddle at my feet. Bonnie hissed to me: “Now you don’t go all aww and hug him, just show him you are satisfied with his response.”

(Next instalment of Yoyo-nama on 29 June 2018)