A well trained street dog

I was driving back to Pondy after meeting a client in a place called Rettanai, a very remote village. I was crossing the GST road and stopped at a place called Kooteripattu X Road for some refreshment.

I had stopped at a typical road side transit point shop. Everything about the shop was temporary, including the coin phone box and the ice box. I was smoking and having a Coke, when it started raining very heavily. A policeman ran into the shade of this shop for shelter and so did a dirty looking dog. The space was enough for the four of us - The shopkeeper, the policeman, I and the dog.

The dog was the shopkeeper’s friend and kept brushing itself against him. I could see that he was hungry.

I decided to buy a Tiger biscuit packet and give him some biscuits. I opened the pack and when I offered him the biscuit, he wouldn’t take it at all. He turned away at first, and when I walked around and put the biscuit near his snout, he sort of pushed it away and turned away again.

The shopkeeper decided to intervene. He asked the dog to eat and then he started accepting my biscuits and wagging tails at me. We finished with the biscuits and he just went off to a corner of the tarpaulin enclosure and sat on his haunches.

This is exemplary behavior and highest discipline, and coming from a street dog, it bowled me over completely. I was asking the shopkeeper how long he knew the dog, and the reply was 6 months. The dog would have been an adult when he started patronizing the shop. Then where, how and when was he trained? Why did he become a street dog? Did he run away? Was he abandoned? Did he lose his way somehow?