Teio completes four years with us

11th November 2007 was a remarkable day. Teio - our pet, a beautiful golden lab, walked into( actually garced) our lives. It all started about 4 months prior to that. Riddhi, I think, was in 6th std and she learnt that my Sis-in-law was preganant. She bawled her lungs out, stating she too wanted a baby at home or then, she bargained, atleast let us have a pet. And so, I melted finally seeing how much my daughter missed having sibling.

We had gone to Pune for Diwali and so we checked on a place that sold dogs. He said he had two pups. So off we drove to Kalewadi. He had one pup with him at that time. It was 40 days old, he said. Both Rajesh and me felt it was a lot less than 40 days and it was a female. The pup was curled up on the floor, tied with a string. It ws a poor little thing, golden brown with limpid eyes. I took it in my arms, it licked my palms. The other option was 3 month old Rotweiler and a 6month old Cocker Spaniel. Rajesh ofcourse ws very keen on Rotweiler, I said, we wanted a pet not a hound..and the Cocker Spaniel ws a little older. So we settled on this little cute pup.
That evening, Rajesh got a wicker basket put lovely satin cloth and ribbons and put the pup into it. This was our surprise bithday gift to Riddhi. She had an unbelievable expression on her face.

 We travelled back on same night. Through the journey the pup slept on my lap. We reached Thane at midnight and at home we made small cloth bed for the pup by our bedside, but she refused to sleep, she missed her home and cried thru that night. I kept picking her up, rocking her to sleep. She kept crying, chewing my finger. I was very worried but next day onwards Teio settled into our home. We decided to name her Teio.

 Teio quickly responded to her name. The next few days was busy, trying to work out her feeds, poos and pee timings. I normally warmed her food in microwave. So eachtime she heard the microwave beep, she would come bounding back to kitchen. She was very sharp and playful but never destructive as a pup. Though she was left alone at home, she never tore or chewed on anything valuable. I have a huge open bookcase but till date Teio has never ever shredded a single book.As a pup she liked eating the left over wick of the oil lamp that lit in front of God. First few days I cudnt understand as to why the whole of wick vanished. Teio loved the oil left in the lamp and so with that the wick was also consumed. She loves sitting for puja right next to me. Once I had bought lovely lotus flowers and offered them to god in the temple at home. I had gone down for about an hour to run some errand.  When I returned, I opened the latch and was aghast at the sight. The whole hall was strewn with lotus flowers shredded and spread across the huge hall. That was a sight I still can never get out of my head. I feel, to recount every single thing that Teio does, will take me pages and pages. She never ceases to amaze us with her ability to comprehend whatever we communicate. Infact it is a standing joke in our house that though we both are experts in the field of communications, Teio is Master in Communications.  All I can say is that we are truly blessed to have in our life. She has filled our life with love and lots of love.

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