You see street dogs everywhere in India and don't pay them much mind - they come in all shapes and sizes. Sleeping under rickshaws, zig-zagging through traffic, scavenging for food in piles of rubbish. For the most part though they don't bother anyone and no-one seems to mind them, apart from giving them perhaps a slightly wide berth. They seem healthy enough...only the older ones look like they may have seen better days and even the ones with only three legs seem to hop along merrily, doing...well exactly what dogs do.

If you frequent a certain part of town, you quite often see the same packs or individual dogs. And that's exactly what happened to us after regularly swinging by Collectorate Circle in Jaipur. A puppy, possibly white, but very grubby. We'd seen her on numerous occasions over a couple of weeks and she seemed quite content, playing by herself, weaving in and out of the pan sellers' stalls to one side of the roundabout, but one evening as the monsoon rains drenched the city, all was not well.  The little white puppy was sat slumped in the middle of a big pool of thick black mud, reduced to skin and bones and with virtually no life left in her.

Much debate ensued over dinner - whether it was right to intervene. After all, India is a land where you have to resign yourself to a certain amount of nature taking its course. But this was different - the first time we'd really seen a dog in distress. So we went back to Collectorate Circle on a mission to find her.

The emaciated puppy didn't even have the energy to put up a fight as we hauled her in to the car and she curled up on the floor, seemingly not even aware of her new surroundings. This puppy needed more than just a new home and when we got her home, she wouldn't even touch anything resembling food. Surprised that she even made it through the night, the morning meant we had to find a vet - and fast. And so we went to the government-funded animal clinic, strangely enough, situated right in the centre of Jaipur. The concept was a little odd. First there was a sort of triage by a qualified vet (albeit from a distance) and once it was established that we weren't just tourists and were going to take the dog home with us, we go a prescription that needed to be filled at the animal pharmacy across the street. Everything from syringes, catheters and saline solution needed to be purchased - but the treatment was free. An impressive feat in a country where medical facilities are scarcely available for humans.

Settled on a stone slab at one end of the "barn", fellow patients ranged from cows and goats through to an assortment of dogs (most of them pure-bred, long haired and dehydrated from the excessive heat). Everyone was welcome and it was a veritable menagerie.  We had a few touch and go moments where we our new puppy had given up completely, went completely limp and was on the brink. We purposely hadn't chosen a name for her for precisely this reason. But, in true Indian style she was "lucky".

Daily visits to the veterinary clinic and a vet went on for the next few weeks - that before we could even consider giving her a bath, or cleaning her up. She regained more strength and eventually after a couple of Vitamin B shots, started to eat. She dragged her skeletal form around the apartment, but showed some signs of more energy.

Eventually, once she started to gain a little weight she graduated from being simply "little dog" to "George" named after the tenacious and quick-witted ex-wife of Judge John Deed from the BBC television series of the same name. Her circumstances and prospects, improved significantly, she had no problems to adjusting to the luxuries of life and has gone on to become a bounding bundle of joy. Stubborn and determined, playful but independent, selectively deaf and full of mischief it's made a great impact on our lives having George around.

It's not something we would ever advise our clients to do, however hard it might be to walk away. The fact is that during a short visit, the best you can do is feed animals where you can - for the rest it's down to nature. Jaipur and Udaipur both have well-organised animal sanctuaries (we know from another experience delivering five tiny orphaned puppies) so if you are interested then we can arrange for you to visit, or simply make a donation.

Pictured above is George aged about five months.