"I don't like cookies, I like cake"

Interview with Sindhoor Pangal

This time, I speak with Sindhoor Panghal – who helps us understand relations between humans and free-living dogs in India for “Philosophy in the Wild: Finding Hope in Mixed Communities”. Sindhoor is a canine behaviour consultant, a canine myotherapist, an anthrozoologist – and an engineer by qualification. She has also written an intriguing book: Dog Knows. Learning How to Learn from Dogs. In this interview, we chat about what is special about the relations between humans and streeties, the unexpected health benefits of living with free-living dogs, and the importance of immersion into the worlds of other animals.

Salut Sindhoor – thank you very much for taking the time to do this interview with me! We had a chat via Zoom earlier this year, when I had reached out to you to learn about the mutualism between free-living dogs and people in India and your work. It seems it is not just a mutualistic relation but also a funny and wondrous one. Could you please share the story of the dog who made it so very clear that she didn’t like “cookies” but preferred cake?

This is a story I tell often in my classes. A few years ago, there was a bakery that I could watch from my home-office. Every evening, around 4 pm, a bunch of cab drivers would gather for some tea and a smoke. Invariably a free-living dog would show up. We call these dogs ‘streeties’. This is a term of endearment we use for these dogs, who share our urban spaces with ease and skill. Their survival depends on being able to find the right kind of humans to approach and appeal to their ‘humanness’. They also need to know the humans to avoid, because they know ‘humanness’ has a dark side to it, too. So, the streety scans the group of drivers, skilfully determining the right human to approach. The dog then proceeds to use those big, beautiful eyes to trigger the oxytocin mediated connection some humans form with dogs. The human stands no chance. He pulls out his wallet and asks the baker to sell him some cookies to feed the dog. The baker peers over the counter to look at the dog and then informs the driver that this particular dog does not like cookies but prefers cake. The driver makes note, buys cake and feeds the happy dog. I, as a dog-behaviour researcher, watch in fascination at this interaction, deconstructing each aspect of it and discovering the extent of complex communication that has gone into it. The dog stuffing her face with cake is my muse, I suppose.

She must be! So, this special relation also has a legal dimension, if I understood correctly, streeties enjoy constitutional protection?

Yes, India is one of those rare countries where it is not only illegal to kill and hurt these free living dogs, but it is also illegal to relocate them. Citing from Nadal’s work To kill or not to kill? Negotiating life, death, and One Health in the context of dog-mediated rabies control in colonial and independent India

India’s mass culling was acknowledged to be a complete failure in the early 1990s. In 1993, Delhi was the first city to replace it with ABC-ARV, soon followed by Jaipur and Chennai. In November 1997, the Animal Welfare Board of India started to support the implementation of ABC-ARV by Animal Welfare Organizations all over India. One month later, ABC-ARV was adopted as the official dog control policy of the entire country. Since December 2001, it is regulated by the Animal Birth Control (Dog) Rules, 2001.

Civic bodies in India do catch dogs to administer rabies vaccine (ARV) and to sterilise them (ABC). However, in several cities, citizens keep a close watch on the process and often go to great lengths to ensure these dogs are returned to where they were picked up from. In some other parts of the country, citizens are less involved and government programmes seem less effective in these parts of the country. But my hope is that we are able to impress upon people the need to be involved in these processes as a way to ensure One Health programs that understand the interplay between human health and the non-human animals that play critical roles in urban ecosystems. Dogs keep rat and snake populations in check, while also being easy to befriend, catch and vaccinate, something that is not possible with rats and snakes. Thus the vaccinated population of dogs have the potential of forming a bio-buffer around humans, thus protecting us against zoonosis. This is a good anthropocentric reason for citizens to get involved in this process and ensure protection of these animals, not just from diseases, but also from violence and death. This apart, there is the question of ethics and our moral obligation towards animals that have historically shared spaces with us and occupied the urban ecological niche.

Thank you! Our project aims to inspire mixed communities (communities constituted by humans and other animals) that function better for animals who are living “wild”. That can mean many things — from just not being domesticated to living in remote areas, or not living under human control. For communities, communication is key. In your book, you say, on p. 100:

We know that the best way to learn a new spoken language is not to try and translate the words, but to immerse ourselves in the language, to observe the context in which it is being used and try to understand what is being communicated.

I love that, it cuts to the heart of some of our clumsy attempts of translating concerns of other animals into concerns we have. But could you perhaps give a few examples how to do this?

Free-living urban dogs give us the best opportunity for immersion into the world of non-human animals. Those of us who provide care for such animals are often deeply embedded in their lives. If they get injured, we are the ones providing medical interventions. If they are lost, we are the ones looking for them and need to know the sites they visit. If they get into conflict with other dogs or humans, we are the ones brokering peace. So, their social drama is very much our concern. Thus, it becomes important for us to understand how they interact with the world around them. We need to know how they feel about other dogs, humans and non-human animals. We can do this, if we understand their communication. Thus, we learn their language through sheer immersion.

For instance, you will see from my story above, that the baker reads the dog well enough to know what the ‘dog likes’. The driver is able to read the dog well enough to know that the dog is ‘asking’ for food. I once approached one of these drivers, outside this bakery and I asked him if he had learnt about dog-communication. He looked at me like I had lost my mind. Before dismissing me off, he mumbled that it was just evident that the dog was asking for something from the bakery.

I watch the dogs outside my little mud house on my farm. A family of four live outside my house. Chaita is the mum. Dude is the dad. The daughters are Iti and Yaya. They have constant social drama, not just amongst themselves, but with other dogs in the vicinity. Once a dog I called Elvis tried to ‘hang out’ with Chaita’s family. He was initially welcomed into the group. But then something went wrong between him and Chaita. So, Chaita asked him to leave the group. There was tension, but that tension was not escalating. My job, as a caregiver of a free-living animal is to know when to just observe and when to step in and intervene. Thus, I have had to learn to read them. This is what I mean by learning their language through immersion.

On your blog, you go into more detail and discuss a great example of how learning their language also means learning about their concerns and not translating everything into our human concerns — the dog training industry has been stressing a fair amount about the concept of ‘dominance’ , and I like how your story shows that whatever we see needs to be interpreted from within the dogs’ culture. Some of the things you mention and show, like the interaction between Cheeru and Chaita, would be considered unacceptable by many humans where I live because the dogs would be misunderstood. I encourage everybody to have a read — and think. But to finish, a question I ask everybody: What is your favourite scent, please?

The scent of a dog. This is the smell of safety and belonging for me. I had a difficult childhood, having to deal with abuse and not having a safe space to escape to. The dogs were that safe space for me. I used to sit next to the dog and express my emotions to the dog. Dogs always seemed to know what I needed. They helped me co-regulate. They helped me feel safe. To this day, the smell of a dog does something to me.

“Philosophy in the Wild: Finding Hope in Mixed Communities” is unfunded. If you would like to support work on behalf of streeties in Bangalore please consider donating to CARE. They provide medical interventions and perform sterilisation on free-living dogs and other animals, in accordance with the Indian law, and return the dogs back to where they belong if the dogs are fit enough to survive. If not, they find homes to move them into them or keep them in the shelter to live out the rest of their lives. Thanks.