Dhinchak - A tail of love and inspiration

Sometimes in life we come across those who inspire us to be better people. My Husband Chintan & I had such an encounter with Dhinchak. Dhinchak is our adopted three-legged dog, a female Pomeranian, whose best trait is - her absolute love and zest for life! She’s by far THE MOST LOVING, active and nutty dog we’ve known :) And why is it SO special? Because of the history of neglect, abuse, pain and abandonment by family at a young age, that she has come from. And she still has so much LOVE to give, to share! One look at this lively soul and it makes anyone forget their problems. She has truly given us more than we can ever give her and her story below will tell you why. 

We think that she almost doesn’t know that dogs are supposed to have 4 legs! She climbs up and down the stairs, jumps up & down the bed and sofa, runs faster than any human we personally know and keeps following us around the house all day long! And she does all this 24/7, like before we can blink an eye-she climbs up the bed & jumps down again the next moment, as if inspiring us to overcome our handicaps (mental, emotional, spiritual or physical). There’s not a dull moment to her. She’ll find a way to play with everything because for her life means having fun and she’ll play with us, with her toys, with her food, with coconut shells which she sneaks out from anywhere we keep them, with the guests, with the neighbouring kids and with whoever walks down the road and stops to pet her. She doesn’t know life any other way. For her everything is enthusiastic and every moment of the day deserves a tail-wag! Dad & Mum ALWAYS deserve a tail wag :) She’s closer to Chintan, whom I suspect is getting closer to his daughters more than me :) He absolutely dotes on both the girls and they dote on him more! 

An unintentional chance brought her into our lives. We had gone to drop an injured pigeon to an animal shelter (TSPCA - Thane Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals) near our home. As we were standing in the shelter getting the pigeon examined, a small dog sitting near my leg started prying for my attention. She enthusiastically gestured that she wanted me to pet her by raising her head up high, nose sniffing the air, tongue ready to lick, ears held back and a tail that wagged non-stop. No wonder I HAD to pet her, and immediately she totally licked my hand. And that brief 10 second encounter sealed it. It was love at first sight! I immediately enquired if she was available for adoption and the doctor said yes. ‘But she doesn’t have one hind leg’ he said. I asked ‘Is that a problem like when she poops & pees’ and pat came the reply ‘No, no problems at all’. And then we went back home because I ‘thought’ we should think over it well and discuss in detail together (and also because I had to think of ways to convince my Hubby about this!), especially considering we had another dog at home – a 12 year old adopted Indian stray dog Rapchik whom we had adopted just 6 months ago and who was very territorial (to read Rapchik’s story see - http://www.facebook.com/notes/monika-vegan-mehta-siriya/our-beloved-rapchik-3/2954300250939) and because bringing another life into your family is a BIG decision (caution for people who ‘buy pets’ thinking they are bringing in a new toy).  

The next day, I called up the shelter to discuss about her in detail and got to know her story. Princess as she was called by them, had been found abandoned on the road with a bad injury on her right leg. She was found by a volunteer (bless her/him) outside a slum and when s/he approached to pick her up, she wagged her tail and was very friendly inspite of all the pain (that is SO like my Dhinchak!). She was treated for a long time, her leg being so bad that a volunteer who saw it almost fainted on seeing the damage! But Dhinkcak still got up and came and sat in the volunteer’s lap and constantly wagged her tail! That is the resilience and love that she is blessed with. And that is the most inspiring part about her. Little wonder that everyone at the shelter dotted upon her. She met everyone with loving enthusiasm and always kept jumping and playing around. However her leg was getting worse and ultimately it had to be amputated. My brave resilient girl, quickly got over it and learnt to function with three legs. She had been at the shelter for about 6 months when we saw her. And within a week of that first brief meeting with her, she was at our place! In that one week, we had asked many of our friends and acquaintances and researched online about having more than one dog in the house. We also had our doubts, but with me the case has always been like the dialogue in the famous Salman Khan movie ‘Ek baar jo maine commitment kar di, toh main apne aap ki bhi nahi sunti’ :D and in this case I had made up my mind in that 10 second time that I will give this angel the home that she truly deserves. 

So finally Dhinchak came in & Rapchik obviously didn’t like it. For 3 days, we didn’t get much sleep as we were watchful 24/7 as Rapchik not fully ok with the new member. For two full weeks, we had to be careful, because though R wouldn’t say anything to D, but she wasn’t getting friendly with her either. Now here’s what D did from the beginning, to win over R’s heart. She would follow R like a shadow while we took both of them out for a walk, so much so that she wouldn’t do her business but just follow Rapchik to the T. So in two weeks, R melted and one evening just started playing with D! And I clicked a video of it too!

  

She has never once shown any sort of bad temperament and neither has Rapchik. We had to work on toilet-training her, a problem that we NEVER faced with Rapchik (that’s the beauty of Indian dogs!). She’s been Vegan from the minute she was with us (more on that in another note). She’s gained weight (her backbone ribs could be counted when she came to us) and is doing well healthwise. She loves to sleep on our bed. And loves to be massaged especially on the right side of her body because she cannot do it on own there. R & D play gleefully with each other every evening for an hour and its become our new hobby to click their pictures and make their videos. The good thing about having two doggies is that they give each other company when we are not at home (earlier Rapchik used to cry if we used to leave her alone for more then 2-3 hours). 

  

I could go on about my girls, but I’ll stop here, for now. I hope I’ve been able to do some justice to the story of my little baby. I’m hoping that this has come out as a story of love, inspiration, resilience and the spirit of Dhinchak, the three-legged wonder :)

PS - We had written this when we adopted Dhinchak 1.5 years ago. Rapchik is no more on this plane now, she's in our hearts. Will post her story too sometime.

Dhinchak

Dhinchak running & playing

Dhinchak when they found her