Bumba!

Many times I think what it is about Boomer that melts my heart and makes me go ‘Awwww…’.

Yes, agreed I was his foster Momma for a while, but I had promised myself to not get emotionally attached to him. I told myself before I even saw him that he would be a guest, and I will make everything in my might to make his stay with me comfortable. Husband agreed to get Boomer only if I promised to not cry when Boom left and to not think of my own dog, and how I lost her. His stay in my house was supposed to help his parents and also to give me an idea on how having a dog would be. Nothing more, nothing less.

Finally after a couple of email exchanges and one trial session of staying with each other for a while later, Don left Boomer with me for that month. I was very excited, and being a non-dog-person, Husband was very jittery. He just wanted that month to pass, and was waiting for me to get out of the whole we-should-have-a-dog mood.

The first evening, after I returned from work, I took Boomer down for his evening walk, and tied him in the balcony and went on to do my regular chores in the kitchen. I heard a slow whimpering which turned on to be a loud bark in a short while, and I ran to see if he was alright. The minute he saw he , he got calm and started wagging his tail. Thinking he was hungry, I told him that his dinner was getting ready and gave him water in his bowl, which he immediately splashed all around and looked into my face. Having lost touch with how dogs behave, I considered it to be either insolence or that he started missing his Dad. I spoke to him for a while and went back to the kitchen only to find him start screaming in a minute. This loop continued for a while, and I started panicking. All kinds of questions like - What if this dog doesn’t stop barking? What if he starts missing his Dad? How am I even going to have him with me for 20 days if he can’t stay put with me for just a single day? Did I do a mistake by agreeing to have him around? Is there anyway I can get out of this jhamela? May be I can call the other person who agreed to have Boomer?

Exasperated by all his barking, I decided to let him loose around the house. The minute I did that, he went to each and every corner of the house and sniffed it. It was a new place and he was beginning to assimilate that. The 8 month old baby knew that bedrooms and kitchen were off-limits and he was not supposed to get in there. After a thorough inspection of the living area, he lied down in the middle of the dining area with a thump, and stay put there. I was relieved to see that he was finally not barking and that he was fine, but was jittery about leaving him unleashed as I was instructed by Don to not do so, because of Boomer’s chewing habits. (I figured out later that Don was being over-cautious, and though Boomer used to chew on stuff back then, he would not do it when people are around)

After finishing what I had to do in the kitchen, I came back and sat on the bean bag and started talking to him. I asked him what his problem was and why he was barking? He immediately got up from where he was, came up to me, sniffed my face, wagged his tail a bit and lied down on the floor with his head on my feet. Nothing after that. And I was speechless for a long time. I just kept on staring at him, watching my heart react to him every second, and I knew it!

If I have to say the moment I fell in love with Boomer, this had to be it. My heart started melting that instant, and it just kept on going. I felt immensely at peace with myself and as if I was re-uniting with a long lost family member. I realized that with each passing day, I was getting attached to him more and more, and the start was that moment.

When Husband returned from office half-expecting a mad-panicking lady and a confused dog, he was pleasantly surprised to a completely-at-peace-mother-son-duo, mother sitting on the bean bag reading a book, and Boom by her side, sleeping peacefully.

Over the past one month, there was a lot of transformation in me, Sharanya and us as a couple, and all thanks to Boomer! He taught us responsibility, love, what our freedom meant to us, and above all, reinstated the belief in me that a dog is a kid no matter what. He taught Sharanya that he really loved animals after all, but was too scared to realize those feelings because the thought of losing a pet was unimaginable for him. He taught me that I might love dogs, but having a dog makes me more responsible than having a kid ever will. He is the first thing to make me feel that there could be a mother inside me, and that I too can have motherly feelings!

In short, he became too important for us, to even think of him leaving us and going back to his parents.

From the people who thought how the month will pass and how soon we will give him back to his parents, to the people who cried their life out when he left and looked for ways to keep him with us forever, Boomer gave us lot of moments to look back on and laugh, cry and cherish about which we speak even now, months after he stopped staying with us.

All of them apart, whenever I see him hold his leash and lead his way during the walk, my heart trips and makes one happy purring sound. I realize why I love him so much, and my heart just tells me to take him home. That one look on his face when he holds the leash will speak thousands, and he is his cutest-best at that moment. And yes.. that is what makes my world go around Boomer for that moment! That precisely is the moment when I feel he is not tugging the leash but the strings to my heart! And I know I am still in love! And this has been repeating consistently with the accuracy of a Six Sigma process. He holding his leash and pulling the person behind it, and walking off wagging his cute butt and tail, and I standing behind him and wishing he was mine! Every single time!

[The above photo was clicked after the whole pulling-the-leash antic. I have tried a 100 times to capture the exact moment when he starts pulling the leash and the person behind it, but have been unsuccessful. So till the time such a photo is taken, I have to be content with ones like this! :-( ]

(And as I write this and imagine him with his leash, my eyes turn misty, and my heart swells with pride and love for the baby which isn’t mine and yet is mine!)

[Title: Oh well.. this is just one of the hundred names his Mom and I use to call him. And he responds to each one of them. Its like he knows whom we talk about and what too!]