Compassion must guide policy on community dogs

Before I am anything else, I am an animal caregiver.

- Mohit Chauhan

I am also a musician.Music gave me a place to stand when I was young. It taught me how silence speaks, how longing becomes sound. I grew up in the Himalayas, moving with my father's government postings, learning early that the world is not owned — it is shared.

The mountains raised me gently. Streams whispered beside me. Ants carried entire futures on their backs. Squirrels stitched the sky between trees. Butterflies paused on my hands. Somewhere far away, a leopard called. And always, on those winding roads, there was the dog. It would appear without announcement, walk beside us without demand, disappear without farewell — a quiet guardian of travellers, a companion who asked for nothing, except to belong.

In those years, I learned my first lesson in love that expects no reward.

Music became my life. Dogs became my teachers. Long before cities and borders, dogs chose us. They stepped away from the wild and stayed. Not for food or profit, not for utility — but for companionship. They stayed because they trusted. And for thousands of years, they have waited for us to deserve that trust.