Pawsible Weekly: The Last Ten Days

I had intended for the Pawsible Weekly to be a weekly update of the dogs but this week I'm hijacking it to talk about travel, blogging and the dogs. :D

We’ve been away for 9 days!!! It may not sound like much but it’s the longest we have ever been away. Leaving the doggies behind and travelling is just so difficult. It’s that feeling of leaving your heart behind… :(

The doggies though seem to have had a ball with Devisri of Urban Dawg. Here’s what they have been upto...


Cuckoo cuddles...


Buddha cuddles...


And even William cuddles!!!


The dogs lounge around...


Cuckoo displays how 'Attention' is done.


The dogs enjoy the morning sun. After this they all pass out under the fan and don't venture out much in the heat.

But they did miss us for we got a welcome that lasted over half and hour when we returned last night. There was crazy amounts of jumping, running, circling and licking that made me feel all warm and gooey inside.

Some ten days ago I had posted about a surprise trip Che was planning. Well, now that we are back I can tell you, it was an amazing surprise. A trip to Meghalaya with JwM, that’s a knockout surprise!



The last 9 days were packed with sights, views, experiences, learnings, insights, limits, safaris, treks, bridges and what not. It was an amazing journey and I’ll share more of it soon.

It was a trip like never before and yet I’m also happy to be back. Back to the grind, my dogs, my blog, my life… You know the usual mundane stuff that makes up life. :D



In other news I’m also looking forward to participating in the A to Z Challenge that starts on April 1st. I’d done it last year but not as a part of the challenge. This year though I’d like to give it a try - 26 days of blogging while choosing topics that start from A to Z. This should be fun.

I’m looking forward to blogging in April. It’ll be a good push to get me writing more. An excellent opportunity to make some new friends in the blogging space. And I hope to hone my writing skills too.

Last year I did words as a theme, this year I’m yet to make up my mind. There’s the option of words again. I’m inclined a bit towards 26 of my all time favourite books. And there’s also the idea germinating in my head of 26 cities/states/places in India I’ve been to. I can't seem to make up my mind. :?

So, Wish me all the best… ;)

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Pawsible Weekly: Prey Model RAW

Che and I first heard of the RAW diet 5 years ago, Cuckoo and Senti were around a year old then. I’m not so much of a raw meat fan so it was Che who did all the research and figured it out. It was how we started out.

A RAW diet simply put is feeding your dog or cat raw meat. However it isn’t as simple as that, the idea behind it is that each species has it’s own specific diet. Dogs offshooted from wolves and hence are carnivores by nature.

Being around humans for centuries may have made them omnivores but their base instinct is still carnivorous. Given a choice between curd rice and meat, a dog will always choose meat. And in a choice between cooked and uncooked meat, raw meat will always win.

In the wild, dogs would have hunted and eaten, which means they would eat different animals and different parts of the animal everyday. There would also be days when they wouldn’t bring down prey and hence would have to go hungry.

PMR or Prey Model RAW tries to recreate that. Some even go to the extend of allowing their dogs to hunt and eat. Well, we don’t do that but we do try to give them a varied balanced RAW diet.

We’ve been feeding our dogs RAW for almost 5 years now. And as you can see in 5 years I now know more about meat. I’m still not a fan but I’ve learned more about meat in 5 years than in the 30 years before that! :D



Aside from me becoming more of a meat person, we have also seen amazing results in the dogs. They fall ill less often, weight control is so much easier, no food fuss, skin and coat is in great condition, teeth are white and breath is clean (my dach’s are an exception in this), even aging seems to have slowed down.

Maximus and William have lost weight and toned out beautifully. I can also help them with their old bones and arthritis better with natural supplements rather than pills and tonics.

Buddha, my old boy who has a heart condition and arthritis doesn’t show a sign of it. And Elu who started out on RAW when she was just 5 months old has grown out beautifully in the last 7 months.

Buying meat for 6 dogs, planning it, and sorting it takes 4-5 hours a week (compared to this the feeding is a snap) but it’s completely worth it when you look at the results.

I’m still learning myself and there is a world of information out there. You’ll hear about stuff we are doing for sure in these weekly updates as we go along for I am constantly trying to figure it out, tweak and fix their meals.

But if you have a dog or cat and are contemplating the Prey Model RAW diet, the RAW-Feeders India group on Facebook is an excellent place to start.

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The Pawsible Weekly - Walking Wonders

The last week has been great fun when walking the dogs. Devisri*** has been telling me for a while now to get adventurous. That dogs don’t just need physical exercise, a walk should also be mental exercise.

But me being me, I’ve been putting it off for a while now, there is always some excuse, some reason for not doing it. The dogs will get dirty, they’ll pick up ticks and fleas, I’m tired, they don’t walk properly, they don’t listen,… the list goes on.

Then last week something twisted in my brain and I decided to just take off. I just did it with out thinking, I started out on my usual route with Max and then suddenly I just felt like doing something different. You should have seen Max’s face with I diverted. :D

But once we set off Max had a ball, there was no more tugging and pulling on the leash. No more shooting off with no warning. We suddenly became a team on an exploration with uncharted waters to navigate.

We live in a layout outside the city. At this point in time the layout is great as it is huge and mostly empty. Spanning 15 odd streets on both sides of a main street with at the most a couple of houses in each street, the layout is a mesh of trails.

Lots of trees, wild grass, birds, and small animals makes this place a treasure trove of smells. I hadn’t realised this in all this time, and all I had to do to unlock this world was to get off the beaten path.

And once I did that last week, it was tremendous fun. The dogs were all suddenly looking at me to see where I would turn off, where I would go, where I would stop. And I was having so much fun watching them figure things out, letting them choose which way we would go, and what pace we would set.

There was no tugging anymore, at least not much of the unreasonable ones. We were walking together, sometimes the dog ahead and sometimes me. They weren’t dragging me anymore. They were smelling and marking along the way and smelling each other too when they returned to know where they had been.

Above all else I've been coming home refreshed, recharged and invigourated for having discovered something new everyday. It's been a discovery and adventure both inside and out.

Boy, oh boy, it’s been awesome (even if that's my much abused word) and it’s a new week full of more routes to explore this week!

***Devisri is a professional dog behaviourist and warden of my pack. You can connect with her at Urban Dawg.

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The Pawsible Weekly - 1st Edition

I’ve been meaning to start this series for a few months now but I’ve just not gotten down to it. I kept putting it off thinking a intro would be needed and introducing 6 dogs is a lot of writing. So I did what I do best sometimes - procrastinate.

But here I am now starting off just like that. Along the way I introduce you to my pack. Kind of like how I got to know them, they came into my life at different points in time not only in my life but in theirs too.

The idea of this post is to make a weekly update of all that’s dog here. A way for those who know my brat pack to follow them and a way for me to keep record. This is all about them, whats happening to them, what they are doing and everything else.

Now, just so you know them, here’s a quick introduction, in age order.

Buddha, my wise old one, the oldest in my pack, he’ll be 11 this year.


William, the majestic one. He’s a golden who thinks he’s a ;ion with a full mane. Going to be 10, he’s a cranky loveable one.


Max or MaxiTaxi as I love calling him comes next in the line up at 9 and loves to eat and sleep. Ah yes, he loves being petted too!


Cuckoo the Bird-Brain, thinking she is a bird and even after 6 years we haven’t managed to get her to believe otherwise.


Sentimeter or Senti can kill you with love and licks. He believes he was born to lick every price of exposed fresh throughly and completely. (Also 6)


And then there’s Elu my free spirit. She’s just turning 1 and is the life and heart of this pack.

Alright so that’s my six, I’ll eventually introduce each one in detail and tell you their stories.

Cuckoo was our first and then the rest have just come in one after the other. They fill my life with joy. Somedays they are a handful and tiring but I’ve never regretted saying yes to Che when he picked up that small patchy mutt from the dustbin and asked if we could keep her.

The current news is that they all did well while I was away and have been good doggies. That said there were a few glitches.

Max has been having an explosion of ear wax for a while now and while I was away Che discovered he had mites. A through cleaning with hydrogen peroxide and over a week of daily cleaning with ACV is showing results. The wax formation has drastically reduced and hopefully will be fully under control soon.



The other glitch was Elu, who started showing signs of pain a day before I was due to return from Calicut. She has a bump on her back and refused to allow anyone to touch it. Considering the insects she demolishes, we figured it was a nasty bite.

Then the next day she broke out into bumps. It looked like a swarm of mosquitoes had descended on her and had a meal. A visit to the Vet brought up two options - a toxic bite or a bacterial infection. It seemed to have gotten bad too fast for a bacterial infection, so the conclusion is a nasty bite. For now the little one is on antibiotics and seeking coconut oil & medicated baths.

And after a few days for not being herself, she is back to being herself - My silly wacky puppy. Destroying every leaf and miscellaneous other things in sight. :D



That’s it for this week. I’ll be back next Monday with another update. :)

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