Heard of the Indian Pariah Dog?

Who or what is the Indian Dog or the Indian Pariah or the Indian Native Dog? Well, ever since I chanced upon the Indian Pariah Dog Club blog (http://indianpariahdog.blogspot.com/) I’ve been hooked. The site is the painstaking effort of Rajashree Khalap, who works with the wildlife conservation NGO Satpuda Foundation in the tiger reserves of central India. She has worked with the street dogs of Mumbai for 14 years. It’s a storehouse of information and a must read for all dog lovers.

“The Indian public is not particularly dog-savvy and the common Third World mindset affects perceptions about dogs. As in many of the poorer countries of Asia and Africa, pets are still selected according to an outdated colonial-era ranking order which perceives anything foreign as superior to anything native. The growing middle class also seeks to display its spending power by purchasing expensive Eurobreeds,” Rajashree writes in her blog. Well, if wish to know more about the INDogs of Orissa or the Santal Hound, you must go to this website.

At the Blue Cross Well Dog show at the C.P. Arts Centre, I was not quite sure whether some of the dogs were Indian Native or Pariah, but many of them seemed to belong to the mongrel category.

Pictures show owners comparing notes; participants lining up for the show (notice the pup, second from right); judges included former city police commissioner Latika Saran, writer Shivshankari and Varalakshmi (Sharath Kumar’s daughter); and dog lovers watching the proceedings.