::A Geek in Korea::

The beautiful dog above belongs to one of my wife’s old coworkers. The woman got it from a boyfriend that is a dog breeder because it had teeth that wouldn’t allow it to be shown professionally. Otherwise it’s a well bred dog. The woman loved the dog very much and tool it everywhere. Literally, everywhere. The dog learned to stay outside at work and wait patiently until she was finished tied up. She would walk him to the bar and take him inside. Everyone knew the woman and her dog as a close pair.

The woman wanted to go back to Canada to visit her family, so she needed someone to take care of her dog while she was away. She gave Yongi to her close friend that would look after him until she came back. My wife described the painful scene as the coworker cried in dismay handing her dog over to her friend before her trip. It was just for a few weeks, but the woman acted like she was never going to see him again.

Sometime around Christmas, the friend was walking with the dog outside without a leash. Something spooked the dog, and Yongi ran off. No matter what the friend did, she couldn’t find Yongi. She had lost her friend’s dog! Soon a posse of foreigners and friends of Yongi was set up to look for the dog in the surrounding neighborhood. A reward bounty was arranged of 500,000 won. People started getting really worried about the dog, since the time he was missing was the coldest bit of winter so far.

Losing a dog in Korea is a really difficult thing. People here will pick up strays and take them to pet stores occasionally, but they are just as likely to keep them for themselves. There is no city pet services, so animals that get neglected are usually on the street for good. Factor in that the dog had good breeding and would go for several million won in a pet store, and it’d be easy to see why people were worried about finding Yongi again.

My coworker happened to know about this situation and let us in on what happened. Since Yongi and Yoshi are friends and we know the woman and the dog, (I snapped that photo of Yongi the last time I saw him at a dinner with his owner), we were really worried about what could happen. I had even considered helping with the search somehow if possible.

After a week of worrying, it turns out that Yongi had been found at a pet store. He had an injured leg after being hit by a car and needed surgery. The person responsible for taking care of Yongi paid the hefty reward money, (as well as some other foreigners I was told, raised the money for the surgery). There is going to be a fundraiser at the local downtown foreigner bar "The Brickhouse" sometime this weekend to help with the expenses.

Everyone is relieved that the dog is now safe again and that when the woman returns no one will have to explain why her dog isn’t here. I hope Yongi has a speedy recovery and that everyone remembers how lucky they are to find him. It was a needle in a haystack sort of chance finding an injured lost dog in time in winter. I’ll be going downtown to donate some cash for the fund.