One of the happiest moments of my life that happened to me five months ago was my getting a little puppy.
The four years preceding that involved much begging, pleading, promising to attempt to clean one's cupboard were not the enjoyable periods.
As one can guess, he's fully spotted and as my mother claims, reminds her of her previously owned rabbit. His name is Astro, his full name being Astro Pluto Ace Jetson. We seriously considered adding something pertaining to dust-bins to his name because his prior interests in the morning seems to automatically steer his little spotted paws toward the trash can.
With floppy ears, he loves imitating a dead lizard when he plays with any of his unimaginably irritating-to-a-human-with-the-sensory-organ-of-hearing squeaky toys.
He's very affectionate, friendly and loves running around and jumping on people as if they were a ball of yarn spotted by a cat. Astro gives us plenty of moments to cherish and think of later to experience a good laugh. For example, a crow cawing sitting on the parapet wall of a neighbouring terrace while Astro was playing with a dried mango seed caused the poor little quadruped to gaze up admirably and it was quite amusing to watch his disapproving glance at the mango seed that had dropped out of his mouth.
One of the most enjoyable times you could spend with Astro is when you have a little can of soap water and those stick-like pieces of plastic with loops at the end which emit bubbles when you blow through it.
Astro has spent many hours at his study (In this case under the staircase among the shoerack) pondering about why those bubbles don't wait for him to walk up to them and observe (or snap his jaws around) them.
Like anyone, even a dog has fears. And the most dominant fears of Astro's include the vaccuum cleaner, basketballs, stationary motorbikes and the stone statue of a lion set in the middle of our garden.
A concept Astro strives to grasp is the mechanism of black ants. They are not in his good books plainly for the reason that they do not stand still so he can poke and prod them for as long as he likes. He likes to pick up his prey (Generally the ant or sometimes those annoying insects that hover around lights during the rainy season) bring it inside the house (He prefers shiny polished flooring) set it on his observation table (the drawing room rug) and paw it, lick it, sniff it and growl at it when it tries to escape about two centimeters with its now nearly-amputated legs.
After weeks of training, Astro has finally understood that the command 'come' does not mean dig the garden mud and imprint the white carpet of the living room with muddy paw-prints and the command 'sit' does not imply the necessity to bite one's ankles till Astro is satisfied that his tooth has made a mark visible enough.
Astro's way of showing that he is perplexed at something is tilting his head in any angle that he can and giving the most puzzled look he can muster. He is yet to grasp the point of the activity 'Fetch' and seems to think that bringing the object back is his personal choice. Tug-of-war with a metre of cloth had always been his favourite game to play with me until I one day tied the cloth to a pole for him to tug on but later discovered him looking very unhappy at his tooth that had parted from him as he had gotten very excited and had tried to gain victory over the pole.
On the whole, Astro is one of the sweetest living things I've ever encountered in my life and I don't know how I'd pass the days without his presence. A stuffed-toy-look-alike, a playmate and a mobile entertainment unit, Astro is perfect in my eyes. He's my Little Spotted Trotter.
