One Year Wonder

A view into our electronic photo albums would tell you how special our Mowgli is. His big sister Leela is his best friend on the earth, and he is hers.

Diva the grey cat, is likely a close second (to them both) but don't let that secret out to the dogs of India!

He certainly has the energy of a Manchester Terrier and runs with the sleek navigation of a Whippet with the most expressive Basenji-like tail. We're confident that he certainly redefines "mutt" and the part we appreciate the most is his intelligence, balance and versatility.

His accomplishments in 2009 include:

• sit, stay, come,
• eating only his food out of his dish and waiting for Leela to finish hers,
• hide and seek to find one of us somewhere in the house,
• carrying a backpack as if he has a significant assignment,
• sit and come whilst walking by a cooking and waiting until permission is granted,
• learning to catch a Frisbee flying thru the air.

His sense of guilt if he's happened to lick the cats dish clean, is so obvious he can't resist just confessing by flattening his ears to his head and laying on his back in full submission. Every day and Leela bring us more joy than we could have imagined.

October's Introduction

One year ago this month, a young dog on the streets of Mumbai gave birth to six puppies. Two females and four males. They likely were born in a small, safe but dirty place hidden off of the main roads. As one of over 70,000 homeless street dogs in Mumbai, she would have been accustomed to little food the majority of her life including the months of gestation of her six pups. Once born, she would scavenge and ingest as much as she could with the mission of feeding her pups from her mouth and stomach. As with nearly all street dogs, she would teach her young very early to trust no human and to gather and save any potential items that could serve as food.

In November, Rhonda, a flight attendant from Omaha was 'stuck' at the Marriott in Mumbai due to the attacks that ensued late in the month. During her time there, she encountered a skinny light tan dog, as is common in India, and requested that a cab driver go and get her some food for her. He returned with chocolate chip cookies. You see, dogs are viewed as worthy as a common rat - not; therefore there is no knowledge of what food would be best and if there were, regard would be ignored. During her early interactions, she learned that this dog was with pups and soon discovered that her pups were in a trash bag to be disposed of. The two females were dead and the four males were fine, relatively.

To summarize this, she commissioned to have them brought back to the U.S. with her. After two months of quarantine in India, the pups flew on their Continental-sponsored flight to Omaha, Nebraska, Rhonda's home.

Now instead of homeless dogs in India, there were five homeless dogs in Omaha. We had already discussed getting another dog and while we had not decided a breed, knew we wanted a female of a smaller breed than our Leela, the German Shepherd. When we saw the news story - a plea for adoption, we knew we had to see these pups and knew that inevitably we would be bringing one home.

On January 8, we met this family and Rhonda. They were extremely scared. Eventually we picked one out; it was almost impossible to not adopt all of them.

Mowgli joined us at our new home, after visiting our local veterinarian, who told us were crazy and hoped we could have a meaningful relationship with this two month old street mongrel. Our vet has done a lot of mission work all over the world including India to help with two main goals: disease including a type of mange and sterilization necessary to support the first goal. Per his recommendation, we kept Mowgli quarantined for one week. He lived in our sunroom and could meet, smell and see Leela through the french doors.