Sharing a wall with Apple, the Panchanatham family should have been wondering who would move into the huge campus that neighboured them. Or into the many other properties the IT giant occupied in different parts of Cupertino. They should have been keeping an ear open to the town council’s debates and the citizenry’s protests that Apple’s proposed mega campus in the town would lead to a substantial increase in population, schools would become overcrowded, and the infrastructure would buckle. But once the head honchos of Apple said if that’s how you feel about it, then we’ll move elsewhere, silence reigned*. The Panchanatham household did not hear that either. They were preoccupied with the addition to their brood of two boys, one not at all welcomed by Grandmother Valli who had no time at all for the Pixies of the world after Mickey passed away a couple of decades ago.
The Panchanathams, on the other hand, couldn’t have enough of Pixie, even if it meant driving back and forth from work at all odd times or interrupting chess coaching and soccer practices. After all, they had waited 10 months for Pixie, losing out on the first litter and almost losing out on the second, only three of the original eight remaining when they landed up at Wine County Kennels to collect their Goldendoodle.
A Goldendoodle, I discovered, was a cross between a Golden Retriever and a Poodle and they had preferred it to a Labradoodle, because all the thousands of bytes they had read on the subject before making a choice had told them that Goldendoodles inherited the Golden Retriever characteristic of shedding less hair. Explaining all this to me, the family narrated that Pixie’s “mom is a great big Golden Retriever (60 lbs) and her dad is a Mini-Poodle all of nine pounds”. How is that possible, I blurted out astoundedly. My daughter gave me a glare and a yelp, “Daddy!” But that didn’t stop nine-year-old Muthu explaining, “Artificial insemination, Aiyyah.” Talk about the birds and the bees today!
By the time seven-week-old Pixie arrived, at the same time as us, the Panchanatham’s spacious informal lounge had been reduced with the installation of a large children’s playpen and a puppy-crate (a portable cage of sorts, really) for her to sleep snugly in at nights and to travel in when taken out for drives. And it was in these that she spent much of the next month that we spent there, trying to leap out of her pen every time anyone passed by.
That month we also learnt how the Pixies of America are brought up by ‘moms’ as disciplinarian as my daughter who’d forgotten how we had raised her. Life began with pellets called ‘treats’ being refused if Pixie didn’t listen to ‘Sit’, ‘Lie down’, ‘Stay’, or to water the bush in the yard or fertilise the tree she was taken to. Even Grandmother Valli, who had for years wanted nothing to do with dogs, got into the spirit of things and bounded about enticing Pixie to designated bushes and trees with her favourite ‘snake’.
Then it was time for Pixie to meet the vet. Not any old vet but one of the many in the Adobe Animal Hospital, whose lobby had more facilities and receptionists than a five-star hotel in India. After several of the receptionists and medical aids had cooed over Pixie and cuddled her, such displays of love no doubt meant to soften and prepare ‘parents’, ‘siblings’ and ‘grandparents’ for what they were going to hear in the five-star offices of the vet that had facilities that would put to shame those in our best corporate hospitals. There we were told that Pixie would have to be brought in for shots at ages 10 weeks ($80), 13 weeks ($60), and 16 weeks ($160), (with a Rabies Vaccine that would enable her to play with other dogs), for spaying at six months ($275) and a microchip implant ($55). The microchip implant we were told was “an identifying integrated circuit” and the chip, the size of a large grain of rice, would be injected under the loose skin between Pixie’s shoulder blades. Mom Panchanatham, an engineer involved in making the chip smaller, knew all about it and smiled knowledgeably at us hicks.
Back we went during the month to Adobe for more cooing, cuddling and a nail trim ($20) and home came the dog trainer to train, at $100 a visit, the family to get Pixie to earn more treats by listening better. But who’d listen or drool over vet-recommended dog food when Grandmother Valli would toss into Pixie’s special food bowl the veg and non-veg Chettinad specialities she’d made. Aiththai! Aayah! Mummy! The family would scream when they spotted Valli in stealthy action. When it was time for Grandma to leave, I’m sure it was Pixie who felt the parting the most.
But leaving was still a few days ahead. There was time to take Pixie to a Puppy Social and part with $10 at the gate for an hour. Inside the large shed, it was divided into three spacious pens into each of which dogs of a size were grouped. Let loose by their ‘parents’ and urged to make friends, they tentatively began interacting. One decided socialising was not for him and refused to move, others kept quick-changing the groups they wanted to be with, and Pixie, after saying hello to the dozen others in the pen, decided what fun it was to use it as a racing track; the fastest dog in the room, Pixie appeared to be following in the steps of ‘sibling’ Muthu.
Then it was time to take Pixie to the park and once there she tugged at her leash and rushed at a ball rolling towards her. But I was more fascinated by the scene beyond the ball. It was cricket nets in full swing with about 40 South Asian teenagers and young men practising. I soon learnt that they were members of the 10-year-old California Cricket Association headquartered in Cupertino. Collins Elementary School that merges with the park offers them space for nets twice a week. And they were practising for an English tour in August, a first; the last few years they had been visiting India. Pixie, of course, was a distraction. She thought she was at a Puppy Social.
The latest I’ve heard is that Pixie has been going to Puppy Classes ($175 for five classes) and has visited Dave’s Doggy Daycare, a doggy spa where she spent five hours getting a bath, a haircut and a nail trim ($65). And she’s been allowed to wander for a while outside the informal lounge.
Who says it’s a dog’s life in the US? Only Pixie, when she thinks of Grandmother Valli’s cooking!
*Two months after I left, the town council approved in October Apple’s plans to build a giant Colosseum-like building (which some compare to a spaceship) and promised to spend handsomely on protecting Cupertino’s green environment and on additional infrastructure for the town.
