Its Magic!

I have been meaning to write this post for a long time now. This is an incident that happened a couple of months back. Our son is in the reception year at school, which is equivalent to kindergarten in most other countries. He is five years old. He wants to be a magician. When I asked him for the first time, "why magician", he replied, "he wanted to magic things at school". I understood that as him wanting to magically finish the tasks his teacher gives him, but he clarified that it wasn't so. He explained that he didn't need magic for school work, it was easy. He wanted magic for when the teacher or one of his friends say: "oh! I wish it wasn't raining" and he could then magically change the weather to sunshine.

He had been talking about learning magic for a while now, so on our next visit to the library, we borrowed a book on magic tricks for kids. He was excited. His dad taught him a few tricks, but the rest were pretty hard for his age so we returned the book when it was due.

In his school, every Friday, they are sent two books to read at home. That week, we only got one book. I asked the teacher on the following Monday if they forgot to send in the other book. They checked and mentioned that their records state that he was sent two books. I thanked them, mentioning I would check again at home. I did, but couldn't find the book anywhere. In all this Kunal was convinced that he had "magicked" the book. I apologised and offered to pay for the book, they told me not to worry, but Mrs. Brown turned to Kunal and asked him where it was. He repeated, "I magicked it". Mrs. Brown answered, "Well, that's no good, unless you can magic it back". He quickly replied, "I can't! That's all the magic, I know! My mummy returned my magic tricks books to the library". I confirmed to his teacher that I had in fact returned the book. We smiled and Kunal stepped into his class all proud of his magical abilities.

As I drove back home, I was so thankful to have found a school that let him believe in magic. Teachers, who felt absolutely no need to correct him, much less punish him for having lost the book.

     

The trials and tribulations of being a new puppy mom!

We have a new Labrador puppy, Max. I am not a dog person, or any animal person. It is not that I don’t like them, but that I like them from a distance, when someone else is playing with them. My husband and son, however, are dog lovers and have wanted one forever now. So I, having run out of ideas to gift something for their birthdays (yes, their birthdays are a day apart), decided to gift them both a puppy!

Max is just the most adorable dog you could ever imagine! No wonder, I started liking him, and was, on occasions, brave enough to have him on my lap. He is an attention craving dog, and when he looks at me with those puppy eyes, I just melt. He’s been with us for two months now, has had all his injections, been micro-chipped, and behaves beautifully at home. I have been so impressed with him I decided to take him out for a walk, ALL BY MYSELF!

He ate, drank his water, did his business and we were out to get my son from school. I was feeling so confident I did not bother taking treats or bags, or anything else with me. Max is used to lots of visitors all fussing and cuddling him. What I did not anticipate was that he would expect the same attention from - every single person walking by, kids playing in the garden, busy mums pushing their stroller and from the babies sitting inside the stroller! Those who stopped by and gushed over him were returned the favour with lots of licks and tail wagging, which was making us late to pick up Kunal but it was fine. The problem was that he started jumping over and barking at people who walked past without acknowledging him! To add to it, there were other people who had the same idea as me and were walking their dogs. Only, their dogs were behaving beautifully, and my “still under socialization training” puppy thought it was a great idea to try and attack them. It was awkward, but more than that it was getting really hard for me to control him. Some dogs walkers gave me angry glances (which I couldn’t care about) telling me to control my dog, other sympathized. One lady decided to educate me on how to walk a dog, the first lesson being not to get the puppy out till he is trained. I would have welcomed the idea, had it not been that I had already walked half the way and was getting really late to pick up my son; there was no going back at this point.

We managed to get to school and pick up Kunal. Both Max and Kunal being so excited to see each other made me think it was worth it, but I was dreading the way back home. Max was thirsty; we fed him with Kunal’s bottle and pouring it on the back on the toy truck. I was very pleased with my improvisation skills. We started walking, Kunal pushing his cycle, me with all his stuff and Max. This time, not only did we find more dogs and a repeat performance of what had happened earlier, but there was one dog who had a collar on but no leash. We could not find the owners anywhere around, and she would come play with Max and then run off and follow us again. I am certainly not fit to break a fight between two dogs, even if one of them is mine. She followed us for a quite a while before someone recognised that it was his neighbour’s dog- Tinkerbell. The boy checked the tag, it was Tinkerbell. He then looked at Max’s collar and told me, I am not supposed to walk a dog without a collar tag (I made a mental note to get one soon).

I was happy but Max could not care less about this dog not chasing him anymore. He wanted to get into other people’s front yard. I was scared. Before I could realise, Max ran off into someone’s yard and did a poo! I was horrified. I didn’t even have the doggy bags with me. Kunal started laughing hysterically. I began ransacking Kunal’s stuff to find something I could pick up the poo in, while praying that the owners of the house don’t come out. I couldn’t find anything – all we had was a big plastic carry bag with his jacket, water bottle and a toy truck that his friend had earlier borrowed. I took everything out and made a doggy bag out of the huge plastic cover. We managed to clean it up, get back Max’s leash, all before the owner’s noticed.

We were heading back again, this time I was carrying a jacket, a huge toy truck, a water bottle and the doggy bag. We still had half a mile to walk. I was fervently praying, that we don’t encounter any more dogs, or people, or kids, or squirrels, basically no other living being.  We take a few steps and Max plops down and refuses to budge. Poor thing he must have been really tired, but I am the poor thing here, remember. That is exactly what I told him, he still didn’t budge. Worse, he closed his eyes as if to take a nap. I had no choice but to carry him. So now I had the jacket, the toy truck, the bottle, the doggy bag and a 6 kilo puppy to carry!

By the time we managed to get home, I was sooooooo tired but I couldn’t rest because I had left home at 4.30 and it was already 6.00 as we entered. Max came in drank loads of water and went in for a nap. I had to wash up, get Milk for Kunal, cook for the night, and feed him by 7.45. We had puppy training classes at 8.00. I managed.

We got to the puppy class and our humourless, very ‘matter-of-factly’ dog trainer gave us a chance to ask one question each before she started the session. Mine, no surprises for guessing, was how to make a puppy walk well on the leash. She answered that we shouldn’t walk our puppies till they are about a year old, and that right now all they need is about 10 minutes of romp in the yard. Walking the puppies is like making babies walk before their bones are well formed, and that it could damage their hips. I could have cried – there I was trying to do something nice, and I could have damaged his hips, who knew!     

Max, of course was calm and behaved beautifully in the class. I don’t know if it was because my husband was back, because he was super tired from the walk, or because it was so late in the night…whatever it be the trainer was impressed. I was still thinking about the walk and what the trainer had said earlier. I could have cried, except seeing 5 other misbehaved puppies in the class, acting unruly made me smile. Our trainer turns to me in front of everyone, and says – don’t laugh, it could be your dog next week. Yes, I decided it wasn’t my day (it hasn’t been my day for over two weeks now!) But at that moment, Ashok and I shared a smile - if only she knew!