dogs club

Rio Kamodia is a very handsome INDog-mix from Mumbai.  His human Mallika wrote to me about him last week.  His story begins very sadly, but he is one of those lucky few who found a really loving, understanding family! (When you've finished reading the story please read my footnote at the end). Rio was about one month old when his mother was brutally beaten to death by a watchman, somewhere in the Powai area. The man had hit her really hard on the head with a thick wooden stick, because she peed on the tyre of a car.  Her poor puppy was found shaking and shivering, totally traumatised and all alone, next to his dead mother. An American girl who was living there at the time saw him and felt really sorry for him. So she picked him up and took him home. I belong to a lot of non-profit rescue groups in Mumbai, and I foster animals too whenever possible. This girl posted a foster appeal for the pup on Facebook, as she was leaving for Hyderabad that very night. I saw the appeal ...

INDog fans! BIG news!!  Seven years after we first made it, our I NDog Project website has been recreated from scratch, and most importantly has been made mobile-friendly. Oh good, it's mobile-friendly now! My colleagues Javed Ahmed of the INDog Project, and Dr Krishna Mohan, put in months of hard work and late nights to make it happen. I can never thank them enough! Lots of new content, and many many links to books and scientific papers, for those who want to read more. (We recommend reading all of them). You can also download the classic reference book 'The Indian Dog' by W V Soman, from our 'Read more' section. A very important part of the site is still under construction, so keep watching this space. It's our updated 'Map of Aboriginal and Primitive Dogs Around the World' and it's going to be gorgeous! The next part of this post is addressed to that smaller but creepily persistent, unpleasant segment of readers who like to harvest other people...

It's the tenth birthday of this blog! And I'm celebrating it not with an INDog post, but with this photo- essay about another breed of landrace dog far, far away: the Greenland Dog! We met Greenland Dogs and other gorgeous 'Polar' dogs in Svalbard this summer when we finally went on an Arctic trip - something we've been wanting to do for years!  Before embarking on a seven day cruise-expedition to North Spitsbergen, we spent a couple of days in  Longyearbyen, the administrative centre of the Svalbard Archipelago.  At 78 degrees latitude this is the northernmost human settlement on the planet. It's actually a charming little town in an odd way, despite its somewhat bleak industrial appearance. For instance, you see signs like this: And sled dogs all over the place! Some have signs pasted on their kennels requesting people not to touch them (because a lot of people actually do silly things like trying to pet every dog they see). There are photos of some of these d...

Epic is not only a stunningly handsome little INDog: he's also an absolute hero!  His human Aparna Tiwari Pandey sent in his survival and rescue story.  'Kindness' is a word that should be ingrained in every decision that a person makes. When we returned to India after many years abroad, the biggest shock was for my daughter Sakshi, who had been out of the country since the age of eight. Her initial reaction to seeing so many street dogs on Indian roads was horror and disgust at the callous treatment meted out to these creatures by humans - including people in our housing society. She resolved to do whatever was in her control to help them. She spent all her pocket money feeding the dogs in our area twice a day. Although we initially viewed this with slight trepidation, as time went by we were bowled over by the intelligence, friendliness and protective behaviour of these street dogs. Dogs that were shunned by society and abused beyond belief, showed more humanity, kindness...