Do Dogs Really Need Love?

Contorted, discomforted, discombobulated, loved?

A stray and his cherished spot in the sun. Downtown Srinagar.

If dogs don’t need love, why do they crave it in their desolate states, out on the streets, and on empty stomachs?

If dogs don’t need sun, why do they crave it? Why do they hold on to it, curled up tight on the cold concrete, eyes shut tight, as if to imprison it and not let it escape through the eyes? Lest they be cold again.

Those who do not care but want to seem like they do, they dismiss all attempts at animal care by saying things like these beasts do not need warmth, because their furs keep them warm; they do not need clean food because look they’re drinking from the gutters and eating faecal matter from the street. But, don’t we? Eat faecal matter? willingly and voluntarily? in the name of food that is served to us today? And that is despite the option; despite owning, stealing, and laying siege to land that is meant for all creation, for all forms of life.

Do we also then not need clean food if we’re surviving well enough with trash?

So how do we need housing, love, and care and they don’t?

Dogs spend the cold winter nights shifting paws on the icy concrete, escaping the wet snow, stay up all night, despite the need for rest and sleep, and then get some sleep only and only if it’s sunny the next day or if the snow stops or if somehow they’re exhausted enough to just pass out in that wetness curled up into a ball with backs arched and contorted into the most painful positions. And yet, they are never really in a state of sleep but in a heightened sense of slumber-ish dread. Now, if by some miracle the dog does get some sleep the next day, he is woken up by a sharp pain in his side. A hot stream of blood running down his head. A young boy has lodged a perfectly aimed stone at him. That young boy, being taught this very specific act by his peers, gracefully educated by the society which uses scripture for airing out the devil in them.