Gola (aka Kebab / Rajpal Singh) from SDA Market in Hauz Khas weighed a reported 75 kilos. On 1 October, she won the Fat Dogs of Delhi contest by nearly 40,000 votes over Googoo of Saket. She had died before the final, and she couldn’t have cared less for it. Dogs are far from politics, even the satirical fanfare.
What she may have been fascinated by is the national interest in her kind that the contest managed to achieve in a short span. The next step is driving awareness towards overfed as well as underfed community dogs, because a 75 kg community dog is certainly not a healthy dog. Organisers and fans who rallied behind these dogs could take small steps to keep the dogs’ weight in check, as extra weight can lead to arthritis, heart ailments and a shorter life.
Given the collective cesspool the internet can be, I worry that similar contests may lead people to fatten street dogs near them for internet notoriety. On the flip side, there are skeletal strays who hardly get their daily meal.
This post is as much about Gola, the fat dog crown champion, as it is about the hungry, fragile dog at the other end of the lane who never gets a plate or a vote.
How Fat Dogs of Delhi worked
The Instagram page @fatdogsofdelhi is run by a final-year Delhi University journalism student who stays anonymous. The idea is borrowed from Fat Bear Week, an online vote at Alaska’s Katmai National Park to pick the fattest brown bear before hibernation. Here it was 64 chonky community dogs from across Delhi NCR, in knockout rounds decided by Instagram Story polls, starting 24 September.
The contest in numbers:
- Followers: about 1,500 when the contest was announced on 23 September and 101K by the final, according to the organiser
- Final votes: exactly 94,000, with 92,958 cast online and 1,042 on paper at four ballots in the city
- Fan brackets: 2,789, filled in on a fan site a dev studio built
- Brand backing: Blinkit rooted for a contender called Kutta Singh and promised the winner free treats
- Offline booths: cafes in Vasant Vihar, Kamla Nagar and Punjabi Bagh, with paper ballots and inked fingers
- Turnout: young voters alongside elderly residents, some carrying campaign material for their dog, according to NDTV
I was looking at the partner brands who jumped at it as a marketing opportunity. Some put real money down: District pledged ₹50,000 to an animal shelter, with more for beds, collars and food, and BearHugs set aside a ₹50,000 medical budget for the participants. Heads Up For Tails sponsored 50 reflective collars, which is far too little. Perhaps it needs brands going for true CSR as a long-term project, owning markets and lanes as corporate or civic partnerships and looking after the stray animals there, similar to how some markets have green spaces maintained by corporates.
The organiser’s Grand Finale post lists every sponsor’s pledge, and it crowned Gola with this card.
| Dog and neighbourhood | What was reported |
|---|---|
| Gola (Kebab, Rajpal Singh) SDA Market, Hauz Khas | Winner. Reported at 75 kg. Died during the contest and stayed on the ballot. |
| Googoo Saket | Runner-up. A 46 kg mixed breed, now on a supervised weight-loss plan at the Jeevashram Foundation. |
| Tara (Khan Sahab) Khan Market | Lost a close semi-final to Googoo. Also died while voting was on. |
| Rambabu (Chonky) Yusuf Sarai | Went out to Hero before the semi-finals, though some early reports named him as Googoo’s final opponent. His caregiver reportedly starts his day with biryani. |
Nobody has said what killed Gola or Tara, and I’m not going to guess. The organiser has said the page’s reach will go towards shelters, food, beds and collars, and the thank-you post after the final tagged eight Delhi rescue groups, Friendicoes among them.
Why I’m glad it happened
Every dog who stood in the ‘election’ bracket had a market or a colony campaigning for her. I hope these are the people who would notice when a dog starts limping, take her to a vet when a wound turns bad, and go looking when she misses her evening meal.
Googoo’s Saket has a long history of this kind of care. Around J Block and the PVR Anupam multiplex, Pratima Devi, whom the neighbourhood calls Amma, has spent decades feeding hundreds of street dogs. We wrote about her years ago in Humans of New Delhi.
What people were saying
On Reddit, most of the reaction was plain affection, along with some fierce “election” loyalty and the odd accusation of rigging. “So sadd ,my fav was gola ,rip gola,” one commenter wrote on r/IndianPets when the news of her death came out.
The worry was there too. In the same thread, another commenter felt the page was “out to do good for the streeties but instead will end up encouraging animal lovers to feed absolutely anything in the name of feeding them and sadly contribute to their already overloaded bodies.”
The best pushback came on r/india: “These are all stray, street dogs. No one is overfeeding them on purpose.” That’s fair, and it’s why this post is about feeders talking to each other rather than blaming anyone.
My own worry about copycat contests came up too. One r/indiasocial poster wrote that “since most are stray, people won’t care about their health so they will overfeed the dogs who are in their vicinity so they can win.”
How heavy is too heavy for a street dog?
An Indian pariah dog usually weighs between 15 and 30 kg. Gola was reported at 75. Googoo, the runner-up, is 46 kg and now on a diet.
Purina funded a study of 48 Labradors, published in 2002. One half ate 25% less than the other, for life. They lived a median 13 years, against 11.2 for the dogs that ate more, and needed arthritis treatment about three years later. Those were lab dogs on measured meals. No street dog gets that. What he eats depends on how close he lives to a market, and to humans who ‘care’.
How does a community dog get to 46 kg?
One plain chapati is about 105 calories. By the maths in our guide to roti for dogs, a 10 kg dog’s share is a third of one, roughly. A Delhi community dog can get rotis from one house, rice from another, biscuits from a tea stall and chicken from an evening feeder. Each of them gives a little. Added up, it’s far too much.
Many Delhi community dogs have a notched ear, the mark of the ABC sterilisation programme. That matters for weight. A 2004 study of four spayed Beagles found their daily energy needs dropped significantly after surgery, and the ones given free access to food gained weight.
Googoo’s slimming menu at Jeevashram, as Business Today described it, is 250 g of daliya in the morning, three chapatis in milk at lunch and a small portion of chicken at 4 pm, with regular check-ups. That’s the diet version. A dog with five feeders and no plan eats a lot more.
How my friend Pragya kept GK 1’s street dogs lean
My friend Pragya looked after the street dogs of GK 1, in South Delhi, for well over five years. Near the local markets, the easy food is carb-heavy fast food handed out by stalls and shops. Pragya fed her dogs healthy food instead.
It kept their weight in check, and curbing the weight helped many of the older dogs with their early joint pain. Two dogs she took in herself, Leah and Lucas, were lean and athletic on a protein-rich diet and a proper exercise routine, and she later found both of them forever homes.
How to tell if a street dog is too fat or too thin
Thirty seconds, one hand
If the dog knows you, run your palm along her ribs.
- You feel them easily under a little padding, and she has a waist and a tucked-up belly: about right.
- You have to press to find them, and her belly hangs: overweight. Fewer biscuits and rotis, and tell the other feeders.
- You can see ribs, spine or hips from across the road: too thin. Small meals often, and a vet.
If a dog is frightened or injured, don’t touch her. Watch from a distance and call a helpline.
The thin dog on the same lane
Most Delhi lanes also have a thin dog, the one waiting at the edge while the others eat. All I’m asking for is an iota of kindness for him, and for every dog that’s skeletal and needs food and basic care.
Vets would put him at 1 to 3 on their 9-point body condition scale. Worms, tick fever, mange and distemper can all leave a dog this thin (our deworming schedule has the timings). So can old age, an injury or feeding a litter. Sometimes he’s just the smallest dog on a lane with a bully. That one’s easy: feed him a little way off from the others.
Our adoption listings have dogs like this too, all from Bengaluru and Navi Mumbai so far. Olly, a three-year-old indie, was found alone and starving on a Bengaluru street after his family left him. Since then he’s been trained and learned to swim, and his listing photo shows a lean, healthy dog on the grass. He still needs a home, so meet Olly if you’re in Bengaluru.
Earlier this year another dog was left at a Bengaluru vet clinic without food or water, severely malnourished according to the person who posted his appeal on our site. His blood work came back fine, and he has since been adopted.
In Bengaluru, a group of feeders noticed a mother dog they had never seen before turn up at one of their feeding spots with four tiny, weak, hungry puppies. They fed the family every day, got the puppies vaccinated and saw them through hospital care when their low immunity caught up with them, and all four survived. One of them, Snowy, is now a healthy, playful puppy waiting for a family. In Navi Mumbai, a rescuer found a puppy crying under a parked scooter in extreme heat, so weak he could barely move. He dewormed him, got rid of his fleas and ticks, had his first vaccination done and nursed him back until Pudding, as he’s now called, was healthy and full of energy.
How to feed a thin street dog safely
Feed a starving dog a little, often. The instinct is to put down a huge plate, and it’s the one thing to avoid: a starved body can’t cope with a big meal in one go, and refeeding too fast can bring on refeeding syndrome, which can be dangerous. Vet Dr Jennifer Coates recommends starting at about a third of a normal day’s food, split into three or four small meals, and building up to a full ration over roughly five days.
Keep it bland: curd rice, a boiled egg or plain boiled chicken, with clean water always available, and no milk, masala, onion or garlic. Our guide to feeding stray dogs in India has the full list of what to give and what to skip. Put his bowl down a few metres from the other dogs, or put two bowls down at the same time so he isn’t pushed off, and if he’s eating properly for a week and still looks bony, take him to a vet, who can also tell you what’s safe for a dog that weak.
Some dogs need help the same day. If he can’t stand, has open or maggot-infested wounds, has bloody diarrhoea or won’t eat at all, call one of the emergency animal helplines in Delhi NCR, and it’s worth reading how animal ambulances for stray dogs work before you need one.
Feeding community dogs in Delhi now
Feeding street dogs is still legal, though where you do it has changed. The Supreme Court’s order of 22 August 2025 asked civic bodies to set up designated feeding spots and to stop feeding on open streets, and Delhi has been slow to follow through: The Tribune reported in November 2025 that the MCD had identified 292 spots, of which only 14 were working with official boards. On 19 May 2026, the court’s final judgment kept the designated-spot rule and added helplines to report violations. Our feeding guide covers what that means for you.
A healthy adult dog needs at least one meal a day, but puppies need smaller meals more often. Nursing mothers need more food, and a thin dog needs the slow build-up described above. If the feeders on one lane agree among themselves who feeds which dog and how much, the heavy dog and the thin one are both likely to be better off.
Overweight or underweight, dogs tend to suffer at both ends. Gola had thousands of people voting for her, while the thin dog at the end of your lane may only have whoever notices him. A small bowl of curd rice, put down where the bigger dogs can’t reach it, every day for a week, is a good place to start. And if you’re able to do more than that, there are Delhi dogs waiting for homes on our adoption page.
Sources
- Contest details and sponsor pledges: @fatdogsofdelhi semi-final post (29 September 2026) and Grand Finale post (2 October 2026); NDTV with PTI, 2 October 2026; Business Today, 29 September 2026.
- Body condition scoring: VCA Animal Hospitals, 9-point body condition scale.
- Lifespan study: Kealy et al., Journal of the American Veterinary Medical Association, May 2002, via Penn Today.
- Energy needs after spaying: Jeusette et al., Journal of Animal Physiology and Animal Nutrition, 2004, PubMed.
- Refeeding a starved dog: Dr. Jennifer Coates, PetMD.
- Delhi feeding spots: The Tribune, 9 November 2025; Supreme Court judgment, 19 May 2026, via Supreme Court Observer.
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