An Unleashed and Unbridled Time..

When my elder son asked me if I would like to come for a trip to a dog park with Daxter (our one-year old puppy), I was apprehensive.. I still am at times petrified when Daxter comes at me with his mouth wide open, and worse still when he attempts to jump at me in his own friendly way. Therefore, the thought of a dog park and seeing many dogs there, gave me the shivers; and this despite the fact that he said that there will not be more than two dogs in the dog park, including Daxter. I kept visualising more than a few dogs there and was ready to back out in the last minute. However something told me that this would be a wonderful getaway, after being primarily cooped up indoors, in this time of pandemic.

Dog Park at Hullu and Kaddi (at Doddaballapur, Bengaluru) (Hullu is grass and Kaddi is stick – grass being something that dogs like to smell and at times eat; and kaddi is the (any) stick that is used to play with dogs), took us almost an hour and forty five minutes to drive to. As we drove into the Dog Park (I am tempted to call it ‘Dog Farm’), it was like a trailer to what it would be when we got inside. When we parked the car, I saw just one more car parked there and the one thought that struck me was, “Are we the only ones here? Wow!!”. We were greeted by Srikanth, a Canine Behaviorist and a hospitable and affable young man, who runs this place. One look at the huge expanse of this place, I wondered who was going to be unleashed – Daxter or us. Daxter’s leash was taken off and he ran unbounded and unbridled, with no ‘NO’s’ from anyone..

This place was just amazing. There were benches or those nice rocks which one could perch on, every few meters.. Hammocks in different places.. or just grass that one could sit on. Personally to me, what was captivating was that there were no enclosed areas. There were places which had kind of a roof but that was it – the other three sides were open – which meant that wherever one sat, one would be looking at and experiencing nature.. rich brown soil, sometimes green and sometimes a yellowish grass, lots and lots of touch me nots, clear sky, young fruit trees, calm soft breeze, a clean swimming pool here and a muddy slush there (for a dog to get into it). Was I glad that I chose not to carry any book with me!! I would have then missed walking around and exploring this place.. As we walked around, it was a treat to see Daxter taking his big leaps and sprinting all over the place, unleashed and unbounded as he was!!

We walked into an area called the ‘off leash’ area. A large fenced area with a gate at the entrance of it. From what I understood, this is a place where a dog can be left without a leash and spend his / her energy, running around. An area with one of those huge cement pipes that looks like a tunnel and some mud placed in it.. and the hurdles that can be placed for the dog to jump over it. As I looked around this area and took a few walks around it, I was thinking that this was truly a place which a dog would love, given the sense of comfort and non-threatening atmosphere that it radiated. While outside of this ‘off leash’ area too one’s dog can be off the leash, if there is another dog around or if one’s dog is that athletic breed which can sprint off in a jiffy (like what Daxter did, when he happened to see a stray dog), referable to keep the leash on..

As I looked at Daxter so freely running around and exploring the nooks and corners marking his territory, it raised a question in me – if a dog is so comfortable being free, why then are we taming them and keeping them as a pet? An ethical question for which I had no answer.. Except to tell myself that we as human beings also like to have freedom in speech, in dressing, in the way we live but to be in a society we need to live a restrained life; guess that’s how it is for a dog as well.

Every dog’s family, sorry, every family that visits here with their dog :-), is given a window of four hours to be at this Dog Park, on appointment; they have two such windows everyday. During this pandemic, there would be only two families with their dogs, in each of the two windows per day. No stress for the dog or the human!! Though when one dog meets another and their families meet one another, it is interesting to see the way the dogs greet each other or the way one growls at the other and scares it away; or how the families talk to each other as though they have known each other before 🙂

A well-spent and rejuvenating four hours.. Never knew how time passed by and I still don’t know if this was a treat to Daxter for his first birthday or mine for setting aside my fears and taking care of him.

Long conversations with Srikanth about dogs and humans answered some questions on – why dogs get lost, what is the impact of them being pampered, why did the term change from a dog trainer to a canine behaviorist (which kind of answered my question on why terms change across different fields as well)..

Be it the man or the beast, both like to be unbridled and unleashed, but know that tamed they shall be.. Both like to smell an adventure and taste one too but equally aware and alert to the dangers that they might face, while adventuring.. Both recognise an owner when they spot one but know when they can manipulate and when they need to bow down.. They seem so similar and yet are so different from one another. While one is asked to ‘be human’, the other is preferred not to ‘Be humanised’!!