Note 22 — DOMESTIC LIFE

Except in the villages near the plains, where they are supplanted by Assamese curs, Lhota dogs are of the ordinary Naga type, black, with white chest and often one or more white paws. There are often brown and white markings on the body, and one type is entirely white with long hair.22 The latter used to be plucked alive as white goats were and their hair used for ornaments. All dogs have names. Examples are Keri (“white paws,” lit. gauntlets), Pangri (“piebald”), Humthe (“soft-haired”), Phunyung (“red dog”), Taphuno (“stay-at-home,” lit. “hearth dog”), Mhakuk (“ditch-on-face,” i.e. with a depression over the nose), Kimung (“stay-in-the-house”), Yimo (“fool”), Okharo (“little one,” a pet name for the last-born child). The tails of all dogs are cut short, and the ears of male dogs are also clipped. The severed bits of tail are put in a cleft stick and stuck up in the house out of the way of rats, for were a rat to eat a tail the puppy to which it lately belonged would die. A Lhota feeds and treats all his dogs well, but is especially careful of his hunting dogs. They are never punished as other dogs are, the result being that they are hopelessly disobedient. It is quite common for the dogs to spoil a whole day’s hunting by going off on the wrong line and remaining deaf to their masters’ shouts. Hunting dogs are never eaten, and when one dies it is wrapped in a cloth and given decent burial outside the village. A Lhota strokes but never pats his dog. When he wants to make much of it he holds its head between his hands and allows it to lick his face, returning the compliment by dribbling onto its nose. When a bitch has puppies her owner observes five days’ “genna,” with the same restrictions as in the case of cattle and pigs. Cats (onyiro) are never kept, though they are occasionally bought in the plains and eaten.