as naughty as naughty can be!!

After this started a series of things any child would be beaten up by his parents for. But candy got away with everything. Right from chewing up all the dustbins in the house to bursting the new football mumma brought him fondly, within 5 seconds. (i actually had to keep my dustbin ON TOP of my study table to keep it away from candy!!

My mom could not dry clothes in traditional ways because they would be pulled down by candy. He thought it was like a ‘Rope and Jalebi’ game we had set up for him to see how many clothes he could jump and pull down. My mom, a keen gardner had given up on nurturing any new plants and saplings because candy ruined everything in the garden.

He did more dirty and gross things as well like run off and play in the naalis of the cantt, bring dead frogs in his mouth and not let go of them, he even ran off and brought home a dirty diaper once..!

But when it came to cakes or other goodies being made in the kitchen, candy would not budge. He would growl and show his tiny teeth, which actually looked quite scary, that everyone preferred to let him sit there and take in all the kitchen smells..

Also came days of eating sugarcane (which to our surprise he would eat so beautifully spitting out the bagasse(the fibrous core) neatly) , playing lots of ballie (ball) with papa, running around all over the house with me, having one to one sweet conversations with mumma. Candy had a habit of pushing himself through our legs while we were sitting or standing. My mother always called it candy’s ‘Oranges and Lemons’.

Speaking of oranges – candy used to puff up after eating oranges. He was allergic to them. He would look like an old hag with boils on his face. And despite all our attempts to keep him away from oranges, he still managed to eat them a couple of times from somewhere and would straight away come to papa, with his itchy face for help..

Soon enough my father realised that candy was big enough to undergo some training now. Papa requested the unit dog trainer to come home and have a look at candy and see if he could make candy his student. The trainer came home with his dog, Asha, a beautiful female Labrador, she was perfectly well trained. She did not leave her master’s side for even a second as she saw candy going mad at the site of another dog at home and running all over the place. I offered her a biscuit which i had to eventually give to the trainer because she would not eat anything from a stranger’s hand. We were all mighty impressed and saw our candy like that in the future.

So the trainer decided to see candy at 10:30 every morning to train him the next day onwards. He also told us to keep candy empty stomach before sending him for the training since the trainer would offer him small bits of bread as incentive to help him learn faster. That did not go well with candy. Candy had his lunch strictly at 10 and the timing could not be compromised. So despite the trainer’s instructions, candy was still sent at 10:30 right after his lunch.

The trainer took him behind the wall so that candy would not see anyone from home and get distracted. But candy had other ways to distract himself. The trainer told us that candy was least interested in the training and did not show any excitement for the bits of bread. Secretly, we knew the reason why.. ;)

Just like a child who hates going to school, at 10:30 each day, right when he should have been taking his nap after lunch, candy used to detest going for training. He would go to the far end of the house and hide under my parents’ bed. He had to be pulled out of there and dragged till the house main door where he would finally give in to his fate and get up and go for training.

But candy was more stubborn than we all could imagine. Even after almost 2 week’s training, he still refused to learn anything. That is when the trainer gave up on him and we had something in our family we had never seen before and we never thought would happen – A SCHOOL DROP-OUT.

Candy's growing up phase..

So as candy entered his 4^th month, he was looking more like a goat than a dog. I had never seen anything like that before!! I always imagined Labradors to be round cuddly dogs, but my dog was elongated with a pointy nose.. nd he was chewing the hell out of my hands on top of that..! we all looked like wounded soldiers with scratches and bite marks and bruises all over us.

But my mom kept assuring me that “yeh candy ki BAKRI wali phase hai, he’l soon fill out” :P. I would hope each night that the next morning candy would become the Labrador of my dreams.. :P :D

But the worst thing happened when my dad told me one day that we were going to Pune for the summer vacations, and not just for 10-20, but for 40 days!!! Going to Pune for vacations was always fun, but this time the thought of leaving candy behind killed me..!! i knew i’d miss out on the remaining part of his puppyhood.. im sure my dad felt worse about it, because he is the ultimate dog lover in the house and his connection with candy was of a father and son.

So 40 days in Pune were the most painfully slow days ever! I hardly enjoyed all the treats and good times my grandparents were bestowing on their granddaughter.  I just wanted to go back home as soon as possible. We called up Bhaiya all the time to check on how candy was doing. We asked bhaiya if candy had grown more, but he kept assuring us that candy was the same size as we had left him, as if candy’s growth would stop so that we don’t miss it..

The drive from the airport to home was exciting. Mumma, papa and i were all excited with a million questions in our heads. Would candy remember us? Whom would he jump on the most? (ok, maybe these questions were only in my head, my parents sure had better things to think about.. :P )

As soon as we entered the cantt, my head was out of the window looking for candy anywhere i could see him, because he used to be roaming all around the cantt, sometimes to the baniya shop, sometimes to the temple, sometimes at Gate no. 2..! our bhaiya really used him as a shopping cart sometimes to make candy hold things in his mouth and bring home.. :P

Anyways, he was at home that day, and as soon as we got out of the car, we realised that he hadn’t forgotten us at all. But probably missed us as much as we had missed him or probably even more.

But there was one change we noticed in him. Before leaving for our holiday, mumma used to be his favourite, since she used to be the one giving him food. But now i think he realised, that he had grown up and he needed one Master he could follow and trust all his life. And as that master, he chose my dad.

So my questions were now answered:

 No 1. He did remember us

No 2. He picked Papa to jump on first and dint stop jumping on him for 15-20 mins. Mumma and my turn came much later..

Oh yes, by the way, the updates that bhaiya had given us about candy’s growth were obviously wrong.

My Candy had become a beautiful full grown Labrador.

puppyhood

Candy came to us as a 40 day old puppy and was born on the day tsunami struck India- 26th Dec 2004. he had an abnormally enlarged stomach which worried my mother, but the local Manipuri vet who got candy to us, told us not to worry by saying 'yeh bohot khata hai'! nd sure enough, what lay ahead were days of hogging and begging for food.. :P ...

my mother wanted to make him a vegetarian dog (b'cz she believed vegetarian dogs stink less! :P). but i made him taste a small shred of chicken once which made him a non vegetarian for life. apart from chicken, he had other favourites like cake, roti, rusk and a few others.

i remember the first night Candy spent with us. he was sleeping in my room. the whole night i could see him shifting from one place to another. he was tiny enough to go under my dressing table, my study table (both of which had only a few inches of space under them). after a whole night of peeing and shitting in my room, the first thing he wanted to do in the morning was to eat again! each day he would drag mumma out of bed by her nighty, straight to the kitchen and make her feed him cerelac before she did anything else.

soon we realised that allowing him to roam around the house at night wasnt a good idea since he wasnt toilet trained yet. nd he had already figured out how to get out of his music system carton that he was brought in.. so we got a big wooden crate sort of thing made for him as his bed.. a bed he completely hated! each night we had a half an hour long excercise of getting him to sleep in it, with my father shouting at him, nd candy barking back even louder! this was when my mother started to believe that candy was a mad dog! :D

candy had no choice but to live in this crate at night, after spending the whole day running around all over the house. B'cz of the liberties he enjoyed at home he started getting more and more restless in the crate during the nights when finally one day he figured out a way of getting out of that as well, never to get back into anything like that again...

Candy's first day at home....

the story of Candy's life

I'l use this space to write about my dog- Candy, since i dont want the world to miss out on a single dog story. Though candy was a little unlike a labrador, but i think he was the best dog in the world 

i started begging for a dog when i was around 10 years old. but each time papa had the same thing to say, that we need to "DISCUSS" about getting a dog a little more. and that discussion went on for 4 years when finally on 5th February 2005, when i returned from school, papa told me that there was a puppy sleeping in my room. i rushed in to see a fawn labrador puppy sleeping on my carpet!! his eyes tightly shut, he dint even notice anybody had come into the room.. i took my favourite yellow sweater and wrapped it around him to protect him from the february Manipur winter.. i had already decided that i was going to name him CANDY..

i sat the whole afternoon with Candy on my lap, waiting for him to wake up.. but he just wouldnt! after finally completing his 5-6 hour nap, he finally woke up all bright and excited. but he dint behave anything like i had imagined my puppy to be. he did not want to be picked up or cuddled and wasnt craving for love and affection. he was a confident puppy and pretty much on his own.. :P ... first thing after waking up he did was exlore the whole house and get familiar with the place as if he already knew this was his home now. nd soon enough he had decided that his favourite place in the house was going to be the Kitchen where all the 'bhukki' or food was made...