The story of how Rosie came into my life, is an incredible wonder of doggie luck & good timing. I was running along one of the main roads early one morning, when I saw a tiny little brown puppy dash across the road just inches away from the tyre of a bus. Guided by pure instinct, I dashed after him, and picked him up, in all likelihood saving him from a certain death. I tried searching for a mother and siblings, but could find none-the poor little one had been abandoned at the age of about 1 month.

As I walked up and down that road, searching for some place where I could safely leave him, the exhausted little one nuzzled into my neck, completely confident that I would not abandon him. Of course I brought him home-he had his first ride in an auto rickshaw. When he came home, the priority was to feed him and remove all his fleas. Then started the process of finding him a home-not so easy in a city where 100s like him are abandoned every day.

When I realised that it was a bit of a hopeless situation, I begged the caretakers on a farm to keep him. That was the start of his second adventure-a long bus ride to a hill station. The poor little one was outfitted with a diaper, a seat was bought for him on an air conditioned bus (no less), and he survived the 8 hours without too much misadventure. The icing on the cake was that the little scrap was even given his own bottle of mineral water as a part of the bus ticket!

Kutty settled into his new home very quickly. He now has the wide open spaces to run around in- a dream come true for any puppy! A Labrador called Sandu (Sandy) has adopted him, and it is wonderful to see the both of them playing together. There are times when Sandhu picks him up by the scruff of his neck and rolls him on the ground…at other times, she gently takes his whole head in her mouth!

Rosie and Sandhu June 2017

For a street pup, Kutty has already become quite fussy-for instance, he will not touch Ragi, even if it has meat in it, and that’s a big one, because he has gotten to a point where he steals all the meat from poor Sandhu’s food.

So how did Kutty boy become Rosie? Kutty of course means little one, and the lady who takes care of him, firmly believes that when he gets older he will not respond to something so childish! I made several suggestions-one being Simha, but the lady in question decided that none of them would work. So what she did was to blow in Kutty’s ears, and then suggest various names to him. She claims that he responded best to Rosie, and that was how the little boy got to be called Rosie!`

Sunitha Srinivasan