59/ 100 Aum Dog
Staying Calm isn’t Always Easy.
I had mentioned in a post a few days ago that I had only ever seen one incident in India where dogs and people clashed under unfortunate and avoidable circumstances. This was only half correct as we witnessed another unfortunate interaction on the same trip, and this time it was actually back on home turf.
Picture the scene – we had flown from Delhi to Heathrow in London and were waiting for a couple of hours for our connecting flight back to Glasgow. We were shattered, grumpy and just trying to zone out of all the chaos and hustle of one of the world’s busiest airports.
Opposite me was an Italian lady and, laying by her feet, was her assistance dog. The dog, on a lead, was trying to sleep under her chair in its bright yellow vest. It came over to see me and have a sniff and it was really very friendly but I could also see it was quite stressed. I got chatting to the lady with the aid of Google translate and it turns out that her and her dog had just flown from San Francisco to Canada and then on to Heathrow. She and her dog were waiting to fly to her home in Italy.
Now, even for a person, that combination of flights would be exhausting so I can imagine that for a dog, even a highly trained one such as this, it would be even more tiring because it has a lot of things to deal with on top of its own requirements and must surely be way out of it’s comfort zone.
What happened next was very unfortunate. The dog, catching up on some sleep before its next flight, was now dozing the the aisle between the seats. A member of staff from the airline came over to speak with the owner of the dog but the lady was confused because she didn’t speak English. At the sound of her voice the dog woke and I could see it became suddenly alert, obviously reacting to its owner’s distress. Unfortunately the person from the airport hadn’t noticed.
The member of staff suddenly reached into the lady’s bag and pulled out some documents and turned to walk away whilst the poor lady was trying to get her attention and also had no idea what was happening. I can only guess that the dog, reacting to visual cues and the reaction of his owner, must’ve thought that the staff member was perhaps stealing her things – totally understandable given the circumstances – and it leapt up and grabbed the staff members trousers, growling. Needless to say the next few minutes were a bit chaotic.
One thing I enjoy about observing the dogs in India is seeing how they live in a way that’s probably fairly close to the way they would live in the wild, with just a few alterations necessary to fit in with human society. Look at the dog in the photograph above – it has to merely live within it’s natural boundaries, following its instincts. Everything it does, every day, is dog stuff. Eating, sleeping, hunting, being in a pack and making puppies are all it has to worry about.
The dog in the airport, on the other hand, has to live within a very complicated human world that is so far removed from it’s natural environment I am always truly amazed that they do so well. This one must have been exhausted. Sure, it might have misread the situation, but at the end of the day it still chose to protect its owner in a confusing situation. Their loyalty is incredible.
This could have been avoided if the passenger and her dog could’ve been given a quieter area to sit in and I really hope that neither of them got into any trouble over this.
The symbol in the photograph today is Om, or Aum. A deeply spiritual symbol used in many religions. Chanting Om is said to calm the mind, focus attention, connect you to the universe and harmonise your body and spirit.
