Anusua Bose Has Been Rescuing Animals Since Class 8. She Still Hasn't Stopped.

Anusua Bose was in Class 8 when her father first taught her how to care for animals. He showed her that helping an injured animal meant more than simply giving it food or taking it somewhere safe. It meant noticing suffering, standing up against cruelty and taking responsibility when others chose to look away. Those lessons stayed with her. Today, more than a decade later, Anusua continues to rescue animals in Lucknow while working night shifts at an MNC and caring for 25 rescued dogs.

It started with her father

Anusua's work with animals began in 2012, when she was still a school student. Her father was an animal lover, and from Class 8 through Class 12, he became the person who taught her how to care for animals and respond to cruelty. What started as something she learned at home gradually became a part of her everyday life. An Animal Welfare Board of India record lists Anusua Bose among its colony animal care takers in Lucknow, while her professional profile records animal-rescue work dating back to January 2012.

Then life became difficult

The years that followed were not easy for Anusua. She describes growing up in a difficult home environment and says that she eventually moved away from her mother and stepbrother with her father. In 2019, she lost her father, the person she credits with giving her the foundation for her work with animals. She says she was left to rebuild her life without the support she had expected from relatives. Around the same time, the responsibility she had already taken on did not disappear. The animals still needed food, treatment, shelter and someone willing to stand up for them.

She turned what she had learned into a way of life

Since 2012, Anusua says she has independently rescued animals, responded to cases of cruelty and worked with both domestic and wild animals. Today, 25 rescued dogs are under her care, each one carrying its own history of injury, abandonment or survival. Caring for them is not something she does alongside an otherwise separate life. It has become part of how she lives, with the daily responsibilities of feeding, medical care and looking after the animals continuing even while she works night shifts at an MNC. A recent fundraising campaign created on her behalf also describes her as caring for rescued dogs in Lucknow and seeking support for their ongoing needs.

The difficult part is not only the rescue

Animal rescue rarely ends when an animal is picked up from the street. There are veterinary bills, medicines, food, temporary shelter, follow-up care and the constant question of what happens next. Anusua says she has faced threats, pressure and situations where she felt completely alone, but continued returning to the work. Her story is therefore less about one dramatic rescue and more about the accumulation of thousands of small responsibilities that have to be handled again the next day.

There is also something personal in the way she describes that responsibility. The person who introduced her to animal welfare is no longer there to guide her, but the work he started teaching her as a teenager has continued. What began with her father's example is now something she carries independently, with her own experience, decisions and voice.

More than a decade later

Anusua does not have a large organisation behind her story or a conventional nine-to-five life built around animal welfare. She works a regular job, takes care of rescued animals and continues responding when animals need help. The scale of that responsibility is easy to overlook because much of rescue work happens away from public attention, one animal at a time.

For Anusua, though, the starting point remains remarkably simple. In Class 8, her father taught her to care for animals and to speak up when they were being treated cruelly. Fourteen years later, she is still doing exactly that, only now the decisions are hers and the animals depending on her are part of a life she has built herself.

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