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Journalism of Courage
In focus
On a quiet farm fringed by a field in Pune, the morning soundtrack is a chorus of cows, cats, and the happy barks of rescued dogs. This is home to India’s first and youngest graduate of the prestigious British Institute of Professional Dog Trainers (BIPDT), Tanushree Rakshit, a woman who swapped the glamour of international flying for a life dedicated to four-legged companions.
Tanushree, 53, lives in a modest cottage on her farm, which also houses a therapy centre. The land, pieced together plot by plot, is shared with three mature cows, four calves, and a small army of cats and dogs, all rescues. “Every single one of them has a story,” she says.
Her own story began in the skies. As a young air hostess with British Airways, she was based in Mumbai when she brought home her first puppy and hired a trainer. But a single, unsatisfying session where the trainer couldn’t even teach the dog to stand sparked a curiosity that sent her across the world. In 1993, at just 22, she applied to the BIPDT’s annual Easter course in the UK, a programme normally for seasoned professionals.
Quarantine rules meant she travelled without her dogs, making her the only participant without a canine partner and the first Indian face they had ever seen there.
She failed her first attempt. But a chance encounter with a celebrated British trainer, who “could have been my mum,” led to an extraordinary mentorship. Every week, during her London layovers, she would take trains and buses for up to seven hours each way to the trainer’s remote Lincolnshire village, learning hands-on among German Shepherds, ponies, ducks, and goats. The following year, she returned to the BIPDT transformed, passing as the youngest graduate in the institute’s history.
Her curiosity never stopped. In California, she trained with Canine Companions for Independence (CCI), an elite service-dog centre funded by Snoopy creator Charles Schulz. With a $12,000 course fee and an impossible eight-week leave requirement, she struck a deal to volunteer, learning alongside professional trainees without paying a dollar. Back in the UK, she worked with the Lincolnshire Police Department training search-and-rescue dogs, even seeing a three-legged Border Collie clear certification, proof, she says, that “disability doesn’t mean inability”.
Away from the training fields, she has always been a performer and an athlete. As a student, she was an extraordinary gymnast and aerobics enthusiast, making her the first candidate representing India at the World Games Finals.
Even prior to this, her flair for performance took her to the television stage, where she danced as choreographer and partner to Mika Singh in ‘Jhalak Dikhhla Jaa’ Season 2 in 2007- the same year that she quit her job as an air hostess and decided to devote herself to canine welfare. In India, however, her vision met resistance.
Hospital directors welcomed her therapy dogs, but some doctors dismissed the idea. She persisted, conducting therapy sessions in institutions like KEM and Deenanath Mangeshkar Hospital, and advocating for therapy animals in paediatric orthopaedic units where children endure long recoveries.
“In the US, even burn units, where patients are most at risk, allow healthy animals because of the proven drop in pain levels when patients touch them.” She has seen firsthand how her therapy dogs make a difference. “When children in pain hold a dog, their faces soften, their breathing eases, it’s like the pain takes a backseat, even if just for a while.”
Tanushree chose never to marry, and after losing her parents, she has never truly been alone; she shares her life with her beloved ‘pawmily’, a family bound not by blood, but by paws and unconditional love. Her farm today is a training and therapy hub. She and her dogs visit hospices, paediatric wards, and care homes, bringing comfort to the sick and elderly.
She even ran a marathon with her three-legged dog, Sahiba, who runs like wind, all by her own, to raise awareness on adoption of dogs with disabilities.
“I have always said the disability is in our minds, not in them,” she adds.
Distressed, like most animal lovers, about the recent Supreme Court order mandating the capture of stray dogs and their placement in shelters, she says,” It’s a very illogical decision that has failed every time any country has tried it. Secondly, we do not have the infrastructure to even implement it. If we cram all the dogs together, there will be a rise in zoonotic diseases, which will finally affect us humans only.”
Divyaja Kalyankar is an intern with The Indian Express.
