My family are always surrounded by dogs – somehow I remembered having a puppy when I was around 3~4ish, then one day being bit on the face (or something like that – I am sure I caused it), and the dog was sent away (she then got sick and died – I still feel somewhat guilty about it).
Sometime when I was around the age of 10 we got a bigger dog – it grew to the point where we could not take care of it anymore, and so we took it to our butcher (who said he would take care of it for us)… two weeks later when we visited the butcher the dog was no where to be found… years later we found out that what me and my brother imagined as “taking care of it” and the butcher’s version of those same words were quite different; I suppose if he said “it would be cared for by my taste buds very well” we might have done something else…
Then throughout my teenage life we had two dogs, Mimi and Heihei – we bought them when they were pups, a Dachshund and a Japanese mountain dog (I swear Mimi was a dog-pig hybrid). These dogs stayed with us for almost 17 human years, and both passed away in 1998/1999.
Then I moved to Hong Kong, and lived with my aunt. They had a viscious German-Shepherd-bastard-mix dog (who hated me – I still have a visible scar where he bit through my hand). I have no love for this dog.
Now fast forward a few years – I did not have any pets while living in Rochester, NY, and did not think of getting any pets while living in Minneapolis…
On the other hand, my family (aunts, brothers) probably has a total of 15 dogs right now – pictured above are my aunt’s West Highland White Terrier Doobie with my brother Philip’s Schnauzer.
I believe in the idea of karma and reincarnation – that we are living this life to fulfill some things that were not accomplished in our previous life.
So perhaps my family were dog butchers in our previous life, now paying back by feeding and caring for all these dogs… But that still doesn’t explain ME – who only has two pet cactus in my house 😛