This is for the families who walked into a shelter looking for a Beagle and walked out with a brown dog of no particular breed and no particular paperwork. This is for the people who said yes to the dog who was not on the website, the one who had been there six months, the one whose picture did not photograph well.
Indies — the dogs we used to call pariahs, the street dogs of Indian cities and villages, the mixed and the mongrel and the undefined — are the majority of the dogs in India. They are also, in our experience, the majority of the best dogs in India. This is not a statement about breed. It is a statement about the kind of love you have to be ready for when you bring home a dog who has already had a life.
An Indie will watch you for a while before they decide. They have been watching people for months, sometimes years. They have opinions. They have been chased, fed, ignored, loved briefly, abandoned, fed again. When they finally sit down next to you on your couch, it means something the shelter puppy does not yet understand.
Our members tell us: the Indie sleeps lightly for the first year. Then one morning they sleep in, and it feels like a ceremony. They have decided you are safe. Nothing a vet diploma could have told you was coming.
If you are still deciding — if you are reading the breed guides and the temperament charts and the cost estimates and you have not yet walked into the shelter — here is the thing we wish someone had told us first.
Walk in. Sit on the floor. The dog who comes to you will be the one. It has always been the one.