A few days ago, me and my friend went cycling as usual. Well, due to the Christmas holidays, I wasn’t able to go for some days before that. Anyway, we were headed to a place called Malampuzha. It’s one of the tourist attraction centres in Palakkad. There’s a dam, gardens, and stuff like that. We were planning to go to the dam and come back.

We started on our journey, and took a right onto the nice boulevard-ish road we have here (which I’ve mentioned before). We went about 2-3 kms on it. We were going on, pedaling, pedaling, when suddenly – we saw 3 tiny pups wandering on the road! My first thought was Aw, how cute! But then I thought of another thing. What if they get crushed by vehicles on the road? This has become a common thing here, since about six months ago. You can see a variety of animals’ carcasses lying on the road, smashed to bits. Most of them belong to dogs, though.

The dogs were on my right and there was a small dirt path to the right of that, so I parked my bike on the dirt road and got off. Immediately, the cuties came running toward me, looking for food (though I didn’t know that at the time). I petted all three.

Meanwhile, my friend had gone on ahead, unaware that I had taken a detour. He had been cycling ahead of me at that time. Finally, he got the sense to look back, and saw that I had stopped. He took a U-turn and came to the spot.

We each took turns awwing at the pups and petting them. We also managed to get some photos on our phones.

We spent a lot of time with them, observing them, and wondering how we could take them. If we left them like that, they would surely have died, because my friend had already seen a smashed carcass of a dog some ways down the road. So we pondered over the question for a long time – all the while playing with them of course. There was some factory nearby so we asked them for a sack. They said that the sack guy would come soon, so we waited. He never came, though. Then we played with them a lot, sitting in a sort of open shed that was there near the road. After a while, some people started coming – workers of some sort. They had apparently left their work clothes (worn out shirt and stuff) in the shed and were coming to take them.

First one guy came and the puppies starting purring at him. Evidently the puppies knew the guy. We asked him for a sack, and he went in the same factory and a few minutes later, came out with a blue sack. We thanked him and started thinking of our net tactic. We couldn’t just force the puppies into the sack, we had to persuade them to get in voluntarily. We thought that the water we gave them would have made them realise we were their friends. Anyway, they didn’t get it.

Another guy came to the shed and the puppies knew him too. We told him we were going to take them away, and he said Sure. He then proceeded to take the puppies one by one and drop them in the sack gently. So in the end we had to force the puppies after all.

Then on the long journey back we decided one person would hold the sack and the other two would walk the bikes. That didn’t work out well because we couldn’t walk both bikes at a time. I just decided to carry the sack almost piggyback-like and ride my bike myself. That wasn’t too hard and we were covering a lot more ground faster.

Now, my friend had told me that we could take them to his house and bathe them, etc etc. So we headed over there, but on reaching there, we were disappointed. His parents and grandparents were absolutely refusing to let us keep the puppies there. We had no choice but to head back.

Then I thought about my streets. There were a lot of stray dogs and many people used to feed them and take care (although not the best they could). So we thought about going there and dropping the puppies off. However, on reaching there, one person ordered us not to leave them there as they were fed up of the ones already there. Plus, there’s an evil macaque thing that kills puppies. So we went to a place where the monkey wouldn’t come and dropped them there. That’s when a passerby on a cycle got angry and told us to get out. Apparently “everyone” dropped off puppies there and the residents were unhappy.

We had no choice but to leave them near the highway. We took some final pics and said our goodbyes.

We were going back home through the highway when we saw another group of abandoned puppies.

Yeah, it’s very polluted. Anyway, guess what breed they were!

Rottweilers!!! Yeah, I think they’re some sort of a cross, but still! 4 abandoned Rotts! They all ran to us when we got off our bikes. And of course, started growling. But that all became alright in a matter of seconds. We played with them for some time and took some photos. Then we decided to bring the first three here and make the group more comfy and nice. I carried two first, and then the third I took while cycling.

We left all seven together there and went to buy some bread. We came back after the purchase and started distributing the slices. We ate some ourselves, of course.

We also gave all of them some water from our bottles. Quite conveniently, there were some leftover bowl-like things made of some plastic, into which we poured the water. They all drank heartily and after some more time two guys came on a motorbike. The passenger got off and spoke to us. Somebody had tipped him off that there was a male pup among the seven. We had checked them all before, and by some mental error, we thought all of them were females. That’s what we told him too, but he said no and started calling out. Dotty, the one with patches of brown fur, came out first – and lo and behold – it was a male. They took him away without even a word. That sort of made us sad, but after a while we both left. I had a lot of work to do for school like writing records.

In the evening, at about 5, we decided to go check on them. We reached the place and I whistled some horrible tune. They came out, though, all five of them, and we played a bit. Wait a second! Five of them?! There were supposed to be six even excluding Dotty! When we scanned the surroundings, we saw something bad. There on the highway, was a carcass shining in magenta. We both knew by then what it was, but went to check it anyway.

Sorry for the gore. Naughty, my favourite from the first group, was now this. And the heartless motherfucking people driving the vehicles were running over and over Naughty’s poor body, leaving its bones and stuff flying around. I took this all in, cursing myself! Naughty was always very naughty and dare-devilish. And now, curiosity had killed the dog.

There wasn’t much to do so we left. School would reopen the next day. I wanted to visit the pups the next morning too, but my friend wasn’t available. So I decided to check on them after school. This time, another friend of mine came with me straight from school. We went to the shop and bought a packet of milk and a packet of fruit bread. We went there and as usual, I whistled to gather all of them together. Only the Rotts came. Poor Scotty, it must have been so lonely – it lost its siblings – that it got depressed and that must be why it is not coming out. That’s what I wanted to believe, but deep down I knew. Scotty didn’t die – because there were no carcasses anywhere – but he either got lost because of the dratted curiosity of that breed or someone came and took it like how they took Dotty.

Sadness. Crashing down one after the other. Still, no point weeping. We proceeded to take a few of those bowls and poured milk in them and placed the pups near the milk. They drank it all. Then we distributed the fruit bread. They were a bit reluctant so we threw the rest of the slices (after we ate some) here and there so that they could eat them when they were in need of food.

We played a bit and left. This morning, me and my other friend went cycling as usual. First we checked on the pups. Luckily, all four were still there. I knew Rottweilers were smarter than that. Anyway, I had taken my DSLR expecting a sunrise, but instead I got some awesome shots of the puppies, which I’ll post later.

That’s when we noticed the sheer mass of fleas on each pup. There must be like 500 on each of them. They were drowsy in the morning so they lay down to sleep. All the fleas rose from the depths of the fur and rested on the tips. SO MANY. We decided we HAD to bathe them. But how?

Anyway, we cycled and visited them again. Then we went back home. I had a morning class today. Later, this evening, me and my other friend (the one who gave the pups milk with me) bought another packet of milk and a packet of PuffCorn. We went to check on them, and again, fortunately, they were all still there. When we gave them milk this time, we poured it in four different bowls, so that they wouldn’t fight. They drank as if the milk was their salvation. Glup glup glup. We refilled every bowl almost thrice and a couple of the Rotts had milk all over their snout. It was pure joy to watch them drink. Then we opened the packet of chips and started eating We also gave some to the pups. After a while of fun, we left.

To conclude, as of now, we have decided that we will take leave on New Year (this dratted school doesn’t give us a holiday) and spend that day solely for the sake of the poor little pups. For that, we first need to buy Dog Bathing Soap thingy.

That’s the end of this post for now. Please forgive me if my writing has gone terrible, this has been a long post and it is so many emotions (I LOVE DOGS). I will give regular updates of the state of the Rottweiler puppies. So far, only one (Black) has gained adult Rott characteristics. It is the only one with pointed ears and the 60 degree hind legs.

Stopping for now. Phew – 1913 words and counting! This is definitely the longest post I’ve written.

I just hope that the four will remember our kindness and will not turn on us when they grow up.