Abandoned companion animals

No! Not again. Not on my way to work in the morning… But how can I resist Pporongi’s sweet smiling and wagging cute tail when I still have feeling. It even plays hard to get, running away when I almost touch it but trying to read my face if I got pissed off. Pporongi is truly a master of “Catch me if you can”. Here goes again a sweet but painful “push and pull” relationship. Pporongi approaches me with a toy in its mouth, nagging me to play a tug of war. Pporongi has now become a graceful puppy after being adopted, but was almost abandoned two years ago.

From a small chick, hamster, turtle, parrot to a tropical fish… My kids have come back home with an array of pets from the street. I don’t know how it became my assignment to give a bath to this white mouse-looking hamster. I had to repeat the question “Why me?” I gave it a kid-glove treatment like blow-drying its fur because my kids insisted so to prevent water from running into its ears. Dogs are somewhat different as they can have emotional connection with human beings. When going out, we have to hurry home, worrying about our dog home alone. Given that it whines for food at mealtime, it is truly a member of the family, which means in Chinese character a group of people who lives and shares meals together. But wait! The dog appears to believe that I’m at the same place at the pecking order of our family. Maybe No. 4 or even No. 5.

Name: Bo Obama (born on Oct. 9, 2008), Sunny Obama (born on June 11, 2013). Family members: Barack, Michelle, Malia, Sasha. Favorite food: Tomato. This detailed information on two “First Dogs” can be found on the White House website. Now that the White House dogs have their official photos posted on the website, even dogs with good pedigree have to admit their defeat. People in Western countries have special love for their pets to the extent that the pet dog of a president’s family gains national attention. It seems that animals with different nationalities have different destiny.

The Seoul city government has announced that any pet owner who finds back his or her companion animal will be fined 50,000 won (approx. 46 U.S. dollars) in rescue charge in an effort to tackle the problem of abandoned animals whose number has grown to a whopping 10,000 a year. When companion animals get older or sick, they are reduced to headache, not lifelong companions. Medical bills are big financial burden because pet animals cannot have health insurances. Pet owners need to look back on time that they shared together with their pets before abandoning them. Companion means a partner, and a partner is someone who shares not just pleasures but also pains of life.