Chain Reaction

This little soldier is chained up daily outside a very old, very quiet hardware store near our house.
When we used to walk our little pug past her she would go wild and bark aggressively, so we always gave her a wide birth. But when we noticed a while back she had what looked like a broken leg going untreated, my wife decided to get talking to the owner of the store to make sure she wasn't being mistreated.
It turned out he took the dog in a while back when no one else was interested, and that unfortunately he's pretty poor and simply doesn't have the money to pay vets bills.
The dog's leg has healed up since then, although she now holds it a bit funny - I don't think it gives her discomfort, it just doesn't quite seem to work as well as it used to.

Although the poor sausage spends her days chained up outside the shop, she does at least get to go home with her owner at the end of each day, where I hope she gets to run around in the house or garden.
The issue of dogs being chained up is one that riles me quite a lot over here. I literally never saw a chained up dog in England (although I'm sure it happens) but it's something that's common in Korea. I don't mean a dog being tied up for a few hours, or even just during the day - I mean being attached to a short chain every minute of your life from when you're a puppy, until the day you die.

At the risk of generalizing, there's certainly a bit of a divide between how small and large dogs are treated in Korea, as well as the attitudes of the younger and older generations toward the well-being of their dogs.
Small dogs are hugely popular pets with young and middle class Koreans, living pampered lives in high rise apartments as a well-loved member of the family.
The less well-off members of the older generation however, often still keep a dog, but if it's a larger breed it is usually chained up, kept outside, and certainly not considered 'one of the family'.

When I explored the 'ghost village' I talked about here, every single occupied house had one or two Jindo dogs (and one a border collie) chained up in the yard. Traditional houses in Korea have a small walled garden and a solid gate, and are in fact tailor made for letting your dog run around in all day - totally enclosed, safe and happy. Despite this, every wall you peer over shows dogs tied on short chains, surrounded my their own crap, and often worryingly thin.

But back to the little tyke above. We noticed this afternoon that her food bowl was full of anchovies (commonly used to flavour soups and stews in Korea, then discarded) and when we mentioned to the owner that the dog had no water, he came back with some and poured it directly into the food bowl with the fish!
Furthermore, when my wife asked the little dog's name he replied 'she doesn't have one'.
She's tied up next to a little pagoda where the owner and older folks hang out in the warmer months, so I've taken to spending half an hour or so sitting with her most days, and taking her a dental stick to chew on and a treat to enjoy. Some days she doesn't even go for the treats straight away, looking for some love and attention first instead.

Her eyebrow decoration is no doubt blowing your mind, and whilst this is certainly not a common thing, I have seen maybe two or three other dogs (always small, always owned by old folk) decorated in this unusual way. The trend these days if your dog is small and white is to have its ears and tail dyed a bright colour, and they are often displayed this way in the windows of pet shops. I've no idea if it's permanent - the little dogs eyebrows seem to be though!


I had a massive case of blipper's dilemma today as I was torn between using the picture above, or one of my wife with a beautiful old English sheepdog who hangs out in our local coffee shop.
I went with the above because I don't think I'll ever get that little doggy wink again, and I posted the other on facebook instead. You can check it out in my blipfolio here.


'The question is not, 'Can they reason?' nor, 'Can they talk?' but 'Can they suffer?'
- Jeremy Bentham


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