100 Days of Travel Sketchbooks Project
Day 10/100 – No Dog Poo!!
The one thing we both noticed right away that there were more dogs in Hauz Khas than we had seen on previous trips to India, and these were not your average street dogs. No! These were dogs with padded jackets and proper dog beds. These dogs looked very healthy and kept themselves busy, earning their shelter, by making sure that we were just walking by the house with no ill intentions!
Of course, these dogs probably got quite a few treats from their favourite humans and when I talked to one and scratched his ear, without the payment of a tasty morsel, he nipped me on the back of the leg! Not a bite – just a little nip – to say, hey lady, where’s my little biscuit? Have you forgotten or are you just a bad person??!!
I resolved that, no matter how friendly and well dressed the dogs appeared, I’d avoid all contact while I had empty pockets, and good Rohan jeans on.
The houses in the gated community were very grand, and most had a guard outside the large iron gates, with a dog or two for backup, or company, or both. We saw sculptures in the gardens and cars that we could not dream of affording. It was a very swanky area indeed (although as usual with India, the pavements were so challenging, it was easier to walk on the road).
Of course, with so many dogs being kept like pets, they all needed to be walked, and they all needed to empty themselves somewhere. Now in India, they are having trouble getting people to use a bin at all, so there was no way, you’d catch an inhabitant of Delhi scooping up poo into a little plastic bag, like we do in the UK!
There were a few official ‘please pick up the dog poo’ signs attached to walls and gates, but my favourite was this hand scrawled sign from one very angry home owner, who had obviously just had enough! As I snapped a phone pic, a sandy coloured dog nonchalantly wandered by and on cue, left a little gift right under the sign.
If you would like to read more about the Indian Dogs, my husband, Trevor is publishing his excellent photographs and stories for 100 days about the dogs we met on our trip. Follow Trevor Wilson here
– it would make him very happy.
#the100dayproject #travelsketchbook #traveljournal #Delhi #India #dogs
