Jerry Almighty

Jerry my sis’s 10 month old cute cocker spaniel is home these days along with Danny, my sis and their five year old kid, my niece Sarah. He has big hazel eyes, a rotund head and innumerable soft curls on his long ears. Maybe being brought up in an open area in the suburbs of Dehradun has made Jerry hyperactive, maybe it is a “pup thing” but he goes berserk at times running around the whole house skidding and slipping and nipping at things and sprinting anywhere, even into dead ends, at full speed.

The one thing that comes to my mind when I see this old pup is “passion”. He seems to be passionate about everything that he wants to do; at times these are not necessarily things that would earn him the title of a good dog. They wanted a dog as a snake alarm system for Sarah since she plays in the open in a place that is abound with snakes. As luck would have it, Jerry seems to be missing the exact quality that would enable him to do this. The word “caution” does not seem to exist in Jerry’s dictionary. Jerry loves and loves to be loved the family can’t help but give in to his charms, and many a time, his helplessness.

Quite frankly, Jerry would fare better as a mongoose for I know he will behave like one the moment he sees a snake; I pray that snakes keep away from both Jerry and Sarah. I am also quite thankful that Jerry managed not to find the leopard that was on the prowl in the area where my sister lives. In other circumstances he would to invite the pardus to play with him and that would have conferred everlasting peace on the twitchy, restless Jerry. That would have been one messy Tom and Jerry show.

I think Jerry’s claustrophobic in our city because we always leash him before he leaves home and our home is smaller than my sis’s. Walking Jerry is quite an experience. Jerry loves being outside and the moment he is, he transcends into a world of his own. He hardly ever looks up, his nose is constantly on the ground and he follows it like a dust particle in Brownian motion. He yanks and pulls the chain in every direction that his nose forced him to follow. I am surprised at the force with which he pulls me along. He’s a small dog to be generating that intensity of force, like I said, he oozes passion and he follows his nose with the same and when he encounters me trying to stop him, he pulls with every ounce of energy in every muscle of his body. In the beginning I almost fell from the hard yank but slowly understood that this dog doesn’t pull as light as he weighs. He never looks at me, never implores the way he does when he wants to eat, he just pulls as hard as he can, I see he legs neck and back in action trying to break free from the invisible me.

Jerry neither learnt to fear or scare anything. I have heard stories of him scaring big dogs. Witnesses say that the victims are more taken by surprise at Jerry’s haphazard motion than anything else. He seems like some small object that is moving haphazardly and too fast to be clearly visible that they get spooked. Anyway the little zealot’s inquisitiveness once landed his buttocks in the jaws of a bad tempered dog who didn’t give two hoots about the randomness in the universe. My sister turned to be more dangerous of the competition and rescued a confused Jerry from the grip of what would have been a couple of stitches and shots of antibiotics.
Of course Jerry forgets and therefore forgives and I still have to take off with him at the first sight of the ferocious stray dogs in the area before they see Jerry or vice versa. In the former case I doubt I’d be able to outrun the danger and in the latter, the would-be victim is sure to pull me towards the danger in a fury of excitement and inquisitiveness, I therefore am as alert as a dog while walking little Jerry while he’s lost in a wonderland of scents and odours. But I hats off to his ears (or whatever sense) for tonight I saw a dog sprinting towards us from a distance and I am sure Jerry saw nothing with his nose buried in a pile of leaves while I goaded him to run along with me and climb the flight of stairs to my home but no sooner had the mutt crossed under, Jerry sensed the presence of his contemporary and started to whine and pull madly at the chain. He gets too excited on seeing other dogs. Last night I told him to shut up when I got hyper on seeing a big German Shepard cross us and started to pull crazily at the chain to go closer to it. The big dog crossed nonchalantly but then looked at me with a puzzled expression as if trying to say “is this pup for real?”

I see Jerry all excited about life and all inquisitive and eager to explore even while I restrain him with a leash for I know there are places I do not allow him to go for the sake of his safety, I tug at his leash seek cover for him every time I sense danger. All the while Jerry never looks at me! He’s busy doing his thing and I’m non-existent for him. I wonder if I treat god the same way. If one exists that is. Just a silly passing thought on the eve of Christmas. Merry Christmas 2010 every one.