Life as it is: Those bone-chilling moments

On way to his tutor's house the other day, my third-grader son Aukkhor pulled my elbow and dragged me towards an unused gate of a house. A couple of fluffy little playful puppies were gnawing and nibbling at each other next to the gate. My son wanted to pet one of them, but I convinced him it was not a good idea, as he has allergic asthma.  

In my own childhood though, I had no such problem and my siblings and I had not just one, but an entire family of five dogs. My fond memories with them and the ones I befriended at my friends' made me realise why they are called man's best friend.

Then all these years later there was this bone-chilling experience a few nights back. I was coming home after work around 3:30 in the morning. The main road to my neighbourhood was closed off for maintenance work, so I had to get off my office transport about 200 feet away from my house.

As I walked with all sorts of scary thoughts of imaginative danger lurking ahead, I found myself face-to-face against a pack of eight to ten stray dogs. Growling and barking fiercely, most of them were standing on a roadside boundary wall and on top of a single-storey house. The rest were following me. My instinct told me to run away, but I stood my ground. I looked them in the eye, picked up a piece of broken concrete slab from the road, just in case, and walked on with shivers down my spine.

Just as I managed to shake them off, another pack of canines challenged me near my house. They seemed way more aggressive than the previous herd and stopped only a few feet away from me. I eventually survived again.

 Many of my colleagues and friends in the city have similar experience, especially at night when the roads are empty.

This makes me wonder if there is any organisation that works to rehabilitate and shelter stray dogs. If they are kept at shelter centres, dog lovers can go there and pick one or two to adopt them as pet. This would spare the city dwellers of much trouble.