I have always been very fond of dogs - so fond that in second grade dad got me a 15 day old pomeranian puppy and that led me to barely scraping through my science exam the following day. Well! I had to get back home to play with the pup and in the excitement I didn't notice that the question paper was printed on both sides.
I have had a keen interest in dogs hence I tried to keep myself abreast on the breeds found in India. Ofcourse the list starts with the street dog to be found in plenty, pomererian and german shepherd being other commonly spoken about - if a house had dogs, in those times when I was a kid, it had to be one of these breeds . And then by the time i passed out of school i was familiar with and had seen alsatian, bull dog, dalmatian, and doberman - though these are not commonly found. Note that then any dog which was short and had white long hair was termed pomererian. There was no concept of maltese or shih tsu etc. And then I became aware of the existence of labrador, golden retriever, hush puppy dogs - besset hound. I was proud (and overjoyed) to have seen St Bernard by my mid 20s.
And then one day at work I and a colleague, both based in India, were in the middle of a very serious discussion about an important program with our colleague in US. Suddenly our colleague on US screamed 'Give me a second. My chihuahua is biting my laptop battery charger cord.' And while she took care of her dog, me and my colleague went on a wild goose chase to find out about this species unknown to us. We guessed it was a kind of mouse given the hindi term for mouse is 'chuha', only to discover it was a dog breed.
And here I am today, about a year later living in US, seeing chihuahua with every other dog owner ... and it dawns on me that my colleague probably wasnt cognizant about the state of affairs in India when it came to dog breeds.
Cultural awareness comes in different packages - once it came termed chihuahua for me.
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