Heavy rains and the Colombo street dog population don’t go together too well. You read about shelters appealing for old sheets and blankets to keep their animals dry, flooded kennels, nursing mothers struggling to keep their young safe as the water rises, and, of course, disease. Posts on social media crop up begging animal lovers to take strays in from the downpour. We even first found Jack when he was a few months old as he cowered outside our gate in the May monsoons, skeletal and malnourished with a broken chain still attached to his collar.
October was soaked through the first few weeks, and it was on one of these rainy mornings that Milo and me (clad in our matching blue raincoats) came across two new tenants in our neighbourhood.
A pair of snowy white puppies, each with a black patch over one eye, were stumbling amongst the debris in a plot of bare land. Earlier this year the papers had published a story about a body being found there, so initially I was a bit wary of entering. But Milo wanted to check them out so in we went.
Initially only one of the pups approached us, wagging its tail and crawling around to demonstrate submissiveness. Milo sniffed away while the second pup kept a safe distance and cried out for its mother. I waited for a few minutes to see if she would come charging out of the bushes, but she never did. I took some photos and called a contact at one of the local shelters — the one we had got Milo from, in fact. Usually, healthy pups are best left where you find them, because fosters and shelters are overflowing and if they’re not in danger they should be fine. But I had a nagging feeling that leaving them out in this weather was absolutely the wrong thing to do, so I tried to find a place for them. My contact advised me to feed them in the meantime.
The milk-soaked bread was gone in an instant, with the second puppy’s hunger overriding her caution. They both jumped up on me, muddying my sweatpants when they were done, hungry for more. With a heavy heart I left them there, hoping someone would come through for them. On my way back I pointed them out to a man who I saw often on a walk and asked if he knew who they belonged to. In Sinhala he pointed out that they were quite big puppies, and that he suspected someone would have waited for them to be old enough to separate from their mother before dumping them in the middle of nowhere. It happens a lot here. Many would rather not sterilise their animals for superstitious reasons, resulting in unwanted puppies that are cruelly discarded — sometimes worse. As if abandonment isn’t a sin.
I’m not sure how much time passed between getting back home and washing the empty bowl out and marching back out to retrieve the pups, but that’s what I ended up doing. The shelter was flooded, and the fosters were full. Did we have space at home? Sort of. Did we have enough food? Absolutely. Did I have a plan beyond this step? Absolutely not. All I thought about was 15 years earlier with Jack, when I didn’t take him in the first day I found him, and how tortured I felt about it after that until I found him again two days later. I spoke to my husband to see how he felt about it and then called my mother for advice. Both felt the same way I did, so home the puppies came.
It was chaos. Twinky and Milo went a bit mad, and the puppies were terrified of them initially. Thankfully, it was only day one that was the worst. Twinky growled a lot but it was all talk, and Milo pestered them endlessly to play. Once the pups realised they weren’t about to be made into mincemeat, they calmed down considerably. In fact, everyone soon got along for the most part. The little one (the cautious one) struck me as quite intelligent. The other one took a while to learn from her mistakes (mostly involving jumping in Twinky’s face or pulling her foot while she was asleep, and then suffering the consequences), but to her credit she was a lot more outgoing and a very friendly dog. Lots of pee from her, though.
In the 5.5 whirlwind days that we had them I started their vaccinations and found them a forever home — something I had been panicking about non-stop since carrying them to my house with no plan that first day. A lovely couple reached out about adoption, having seen some of the posts my friends had shared over social media. They already had another pup the same age and thought these two would be great sisters for her. They lived all the way down south, having moved there recently from Colombo.
They drove to the Western Province in the pouring rain that weekend, and when they got to our place on Sunday morning the sun was finally out. When I released the pups from my husband’s office room (he sacrificed his space for their comfort), the couple immediately sat on the floor with open arms as the little ones ran right into them. Love at first sight. About 20 minutes later, they were all gone.
My husband and Milo were saddened by the departure of our little wet guests, but Twinky and I breathed a sigh of relief. No more puppy teeth sinking into her feet, and I no longer had to stress about possibly ending up with four dogs in the house. The survival mode was real.
I also got ZERO illustration work done in those 5.5 days, but after they left, I drew their portrait.
Now that it’s sunk in, I do miss them a little. Would I foster again? I’m not sure — the danger of ending up with a foster fail and putting undue stress on my own dogs was too real. Twinky in particular deserves to spend her old age harassed only by Milo — not an entire troupe of youngsters.
But you never know what the next morning’s walk might bring.
They look like such sweethearts! And maybe just a teensy bit full of mischief. I'm so glad fate put them in your path! ❤️
Love your dog story! We found ours abandoned in the middle of nowhere in the Arizona desert. Could not leave him there. Dropped him off at a local shelter, but could not forget about him and ended up adopting him. They are the best.