Dan, the Pet Who Found Us
Pets across decades
When I write this in 2026, my love for pets—especially dogs, and within that Golden Retrievers—is undiminished.
People sometimes ask where this came from. I usually joke that no dog ever barks at me. The honest answer begins in Manjankarani — a small village outside Madras — and Ooty, long before smartphones, when pets were rarely photographed. Cameras and film were not fixtures in every home then.
Dad was a vet by education, a specialist in bovine gynecology and artificial insemination. Pets weren’t a problem from his side. Mom grew up surrounded by animals too. She doesn’t exactly like them, but she never shunned them either. Apparently my grandfather even kept deer at home; I remember seeing a pair of stag horns in Manjankarani.
I can’t call the village strays our first pets, but there were a bunch of indies my cousin and I played with and fed. We were a pampered lot there. Once, he even captured a parrot and left it with my grandmother to care for. Monday to Friday, we were back at school in Madras. By the time we returned, the parrot hadn’t survived the cage. That was one of my earliest lessons in how badly good intentions can go with animals.
My uncle did not want dogs around until much later, when they’d be useful as guard dogs. My cousin and I had to hide our dog-time from him. We used to beg, or just quietly take, milk from grandma to feed them — the farm’s cows and buffaloes made that easy.
Our first unplanned pet arrived in Ooty.
His name was Dan, chosen from the horse-racing section of the newspaper. There was a horse called Double Dan, and somehow “Dan” stuck. He was a German Shepherd, a crossbreed from what I heard, though I never knew with what. Maybe because of the Ooty weather, he was much furrier than the shepherds you usually see—almost like a Pomeranian in a GSD’s body. He was meant for one of Dad’s colleagues, but the colleague never took him.
I still remember the day my sister and I came home from school and saw a small pup tentatively sneak out from under the sofa and softly bite my shoe and socks. Both of us were overjoyed. Mom kept reminding us he would go to his “real” home soon.
He never left.
Dan was a high-drive dog. Because of the Ooty weather and our school routines, he never had a formal walk schedule. His first neck belt was one of my outgrown belts, the kind with some elastic in it. Dan quickly figured out how to slip out of it when excited. He never bit or hurt anyone, but the speed at which he sprinted and chased people scared them senseless.
We were lucky to be living on a large farm, so space wasn’t an issue. He had room to drain his energy. The way he would recognize our car long before it reached the gate was pure cliché: the dog as man’s best friend. In my case, as a boy’s best friend. We truly grew up together. I had no idea then about daily walks, deworming schedules, vaccinations—he was just my dog.
Bath days were a spectacle. With his fur and energy, it was something to watch from a safe distance. I don’t remember him having ticks; maybe the disinfectant shampoos did their job.
Dan stayed with us until Dad was transferred to Tanjavur. The vet in Dad worried that a dog who’d spent his whole life in Ooty might not survive the plains heat. Dan found a home within the farm. At that age, all I knew was that we were the ones going away.
We parted not by choice but by circumstance. I was in the middle of my 10th grade when Dad’s transfer came through. There was no time for a proper goodbye. We were children, and these were not our decisions to make.
I visited Ooty a few years later with my friends. By then Dan had run away from his new home and was never found.
Neither my sister nor I pestered our parents for a new pet after that. We liked dogs when they were around, but Dad’s transfers, our studies, and Mom’s mixed feelings meant it never felt like the right time. I had to wait all the way till 2022 to bring another dog home.
Maybe that long gap is why Leo, and now Otis and Ollie, occupy so much space in my heart. They’re not just pets—they’re a continuation of something that began with indies in Manjankarani and a furry German Shepherd who snuck out from under a sofa in Ooty and claimed us as his own.
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Note: Dan belonged to a pre-smartphone time. I don’t have a single photo of him—all I have is memory. If a picture ever surfaces from family albums, I’ll add it here.
Part 1 of 2. Part 2 — Leo, Otis & Ollie — coming next week.