Untouchable Canines: The Gastrointestinal Health of Stray Dogs

The Gut Health of an Untouchable Canine.

I am aware that nobody wants to hear about the gastrointestinal health of dogs, let alone stray dogs, especially in a place like Kashmir where human bodies are used by the state as dispensable body bags in the war machinery, but I see these stray dogs gathered around garbage disposals, squatting and quivering over their hind legs, pleading with their fatigued eyes, trying to push out the filth their stomachs are forced to process, and what I see coming out through their orifices is excreta of an extremely unhealthy nature - bile, toxic, burning, hot, scalding intestines on their way out.

I can only imagine how much agony and ill health they must be spending their lives in, with prolapsed stomachs, damaged intestines, burning forever in fever, pain and discomfort. To be eating garbage and refuse, that we throw away, an amalgam of dirt, grease, plastic, blood, and perhaps some grains of rice, which at least in the past would find their way on to the porches of the Kashmir of the olden days, now packed in black bags of plastic and thrown in airtight containers so as to starve the animals in the area, lest they shat on our pavements. What a tragic life to be living; to be forced to ingest our waste, because we have left nothing for the other species to consume. And on top of all that, to be unloved by many, to be hated, pelted at, and seen as dirty, as creatures undeserving of love or even a glance of kindness.

And for what?

For us to be consuming KFC and sour patches, and heavy ramadan platters and traamis without giving a thought to life around us wasting away.

Grief originates, settles, and festers in the gut. Pain finds its home and destination in the gut.

And a stray dog’s gut is a portable purgatory.