A white Pomeranian dog, about three years old, was found abandoned outside the World Market in Chackai, Thiruvananthapuram. The owner apparently had a problem with an ‘illicit relationship’ she’s had with a dog next door.

This is no practical joke. Someone has actually abandoned a dog, raised with a lot of care, because they thought the pet has no morals. This was deduced from a note the owner had apparently tied to the dog.

A passerby that saw the abandoned dog called a volunteer of People For Animals, who went to collect the Pomeranian. “I took her home and put her in my kennel. She is really nice, someone would adopt her soon. But there is a really hopeful look on her face, expecting that her owner would come to pick her up,” says Shameem, the PFA volunteer.

Shameem was shocked to find a note that the owner has carefully tied to the dog before abandoning her.  “It is a very good dog. Good habits. Do not need a lot of food. No illnesses. She’s given a bath every five days. She only barks - in three years, she has not bitten anyone. She has mostly fed milk, biscuits and eggs,” the note said before that strange last line: “She is being abandoned because she was found to have illicit relationship with a dog in the neighbourhood.”

“The dog is in heat,” Shameem says. And that’s what dogs do when they are in heat – they mate. If the weird owner didn’t want the dog to breed, there is sterilisation. But if they wanted her to be a ‘virgin’, they would have to lock her up in a room.

There has been a lot of cases of abandoned dogs – injured ones, really sick ones and so on -- but this is the first she has seen a reason like this, Shameem says.

The owner appears to have taken the old story of morality celebrated in so many Malayalam films seriously. That they would raise children with a lot of love and care – biscuits and eggs in this case – and a time would come to look for a suitable partner. There would be a wedding, they thought, and then grandchildren, barking at their heels. But this disobedient dog has gone on to find a no-good partner of her own, and also began mating. Outside of wedlock! They could not possibly look at the neighbours' face anymore. No wonder then that she had to be shown the door, left outside a market with a note of warnings.