It’s commonplace for our furry four-legged friends to get run over by speeding vehicles – either because the driver didn’t observe them in the dead of the night or because they didn’t care to stop. Now, these streeties are thankful to Anusha J Karnad, a young canine behaviourist and trainer in the city whose non-profit initiative, TYD reflective collars for street dogs is fitting strays with “magic”, reflective collars so they are safe and sound.
An ardent pooch person, Anusha feeds her streeties everyday. “After giving them dinner one night, I heard that one of the dogs was run over. I was devastated and knew I had to do something about it,” she says. Although she is an assistant manager at a corporate firm working night shifts, Anusha took it upon herself to bring about the change. Anusha’s initiative that started out in January this year, makes reflective collars for stray dogs that get them to glow in the night’s haze, thereby saving their lives from a speeding vehicle and preventing motorists swerving and getting into accidents. – a win-win situation, if you’d like to call it that.
“I’d heard of a group called Moto Paws putting reflective collars on street dogs in Pune, although they cater to other cities, there was no such initiative in Bengaluru,” she ‘reflects’, taking to the cause with three of her friends, Vijaya Lakshmi BR, Sanjay Rao and Keerthi. These collars have literally seen the light across Koramangala, Bannerghatta Road, Whitefield and Marathahalli. “It’s overwhelming that people from other cities including Dharamashala, Mumbai, Pune and Hyderabad have recognised our efforts and have chosen to buy these collars from us,” she beams.
Over weekends, Anusha and her friends buy reflective cloth, cut and stitch them together, securing it with sturdy velcro. “It costs ' 50 each. We work 18 hours over the weekends and plough back the money into the materials,” explains the youngster whose inspiring, not-for-profit initiative has seen at least 300 dogs strapped.
Their venture is called TYD, short for Tidy, Anusha tells us. But as is the case with all things good, everything isn’t so ‘tidy’. “We have been told that people have been stealing these collars. They don’t seem to know what these collars do and we’re trying to raise awareness on the same,” adds Anusha.
