::A Geek in Korea::

Due to our busy schedules, and changes in when we teach, we can’t always be home at a reasonable hour to feed Yoshi. As a way to assure that Yoshi will get fed at the same time every day, we purchased an automatic dog feeder. The feeder we bought allows for four meals to be programmed in sequence. We could feed Yoshi once a day for four days, or twice a day, etc. There is a clock and a timer associated with each of the feeding times. The best part of the appliance is that it lets you record a short message to play after the food bowl has been rotated to get the dog’s attention.

We’ve trained Yoshi so that he needs "permission" to eat when we put food in his bowl. If we are watching when we put the food in his bowl, he’ll wait until we say, "Ma Ma!", which is what you say to infants meaning "Eat!". Since the instructions to the machine came in English, and I was home when it was delivered, I was the one that recorded my voice saying the command to eat. Now whenever the machine is programmed to feed Yoshi, I’ll hear a voice saying, "Yoshi, Ma ma!"

Of course, the only problem is that when we set Yoshi’s food dish to feed him when we went out to watch a movie, we only had enough food for that day. The food dish cycles through the program for three days, because we didn’t bother to turn it off, but each time it would tell Yoshi to eat, but would only present him an empty dish. Talk about a mixed message.

The best reaction we got out of our talking food dish was when I went to feed Yoshi at the same time the feeder said it was time to eat. Yoshi saw me getting food out of the bowl and heard my voice coming from another room telling me to eat. He usually follows me when I go near the food, so when he heard my voice, he did a double take, as if he didn’t know what was going on with me being in two places at once. Messing with a dogs mind wasn’t on the list of features, but it should have been.

We got a phone call last night as we were about to watch A Night at the Museum in the theater. My mother in law had been incommunicado for a few days due to the holidays and work, but she finally got in touch with us to invite us to a mountain trek on New Years Day. We only had a minute to talk before the trailers started, so we didn’t confirm our plans of going immediately. The only thing I asked was if we were going to be hiking early in the morning, or at a more reasonable time, since I was feeling tired and wanted to sleep in. She couldn’t reply, so we told her to call tomorrow when they got more solid plans.

We got a call at eight o’clock in the morning today about going. We actually declined since they had woke us up, but thought better of it and called back to confirm that we would go on a hike with them. My wife’s mother, and most Koreans I know, go to the mountain for exercise. Perhaps growing up around mountains has spoiled the sense of accomplishment that is given after hiking up a steep slope, but their goals are antithetical to what I enjoy doing. My American family would hike up the occasional mountain on vacation to enjoy the view. Our goal was never to go as fast as possible up the slope to prove that we could. The destination was secondary to the enjoyment of the trip. This is the exact opposite of what it is like hiking with a group of Korean people.

We went to "Stung-kol" which is a nearby mountain fed stream that is popular for picnics. It also happens to be one of my favorite Korean words to say, and I have no idea why. I’ve been there a few times, and it’s surrounded by a series of sloping mountains. Korean mountain climbs are different that in the United States. There are "paths", but a minimal amount of other services. Since the park is free to visit (most of the time), they don’t have much in the way of upkeep or safety concerns. Only on the steepest, most dangerous parts have ropes been tied between posts or to trees. There are no paved parts to the trail, but if you need to cross a stream or flowing waterway, there are wooden bridges. Signs are limited as well. We saw three or four signs in a four kilometer hike, and some banners telling people that throwing litter or smoking at the summit was banned. (Not that anyone followed those rules.)

The grueling pace setter for most of the trek up the mountain actually happened to be Yoshi. We brought him along since he had never been to a mountain for a walk before. Besides, her parent’s love Yoshi, but don’t really know how to take care of a dog. It turns out that he is an expert mountain climbing dog. He’s a long legged for a shih zhu, but isn’t the tallest dog. Since there are no steps, and the path is covered in jutting rocks and bare exposed roots, he had a lot of walking to do. Climbing the mountain with one hand while trying to keep a dog on leash from getting trampled by busy Korean hikers was a lot of work. Yoshi set the pace and drove us forward, but wouldn’t walk with my father in law holding him. He wanted me to lead him around. My father in law couldn’t understand the whole range of "dog" issues we concerned ourselves with when we brought Yoshi water or gave him encouragement for climbing well.

We got to a marker that was roughly 25% of our way though the trip that said that we had a long way to go to reach the peak of our mountain. Every time I asked if we had any plan about our descent, or how much farther we were going, I got a rather stock response of "Five more minutes to the top". We had climbed the first kilometer in about an hour or so, but the peak was that distance once more walking along the top of the mountains. No one would stop and say, "Wow, look at the view," at any time. They pressed towards the peak, and any desire to stop and look around at where we were and that we had accomplished was met with pity. "We’re exercising! Come on! Five more minutes to the top!" That’s nice, but why climb a mountain if you can’t look around and see something? Everyone we met would turn to each other and say, "Oh, five more minutes till you get there! Honest!"

You think I don’t know what a watch is?

We did eventually make it to the top. We stopped in the middle of a forest with a large group of people who had pushed to the top of the mountain. There was no view whatsoever. The best clearing to see anything had been much farther back. We made it to the peak and were surrounded in a pine forest. No wonder no one climbs mountains for the view.

Now, the descent was either back the way we came, or along a "steeper" path. The way we came wasn’t exactly a great to begin with, but the route from the top back was hellish. Immediately upon the descent I saw that there was actually a lined path with hand ropes for support. It was extremely rocky and it was too hard to hold on, descend, as well as trying to keep Yoshi from become a pinball between all the rocks. My father in law offered to carry Yoshi when we put him in his red back pack. Yoshi loves being carried in his bag, and my Father in law got to set the pace for the decline.

We got to some stairs, which made me think, "Yay, Stairs!", except these were the most uncomfortable, hard to descend stairs ever. They were half the size of normal stairs, and had been covered with a thick rubber made from slashed recycled car tires tied in a mesh. The effect was that each of these stairs was enough to make you bend your leg, but never straighten it completely when you placed your foot down. It was like trying to descend the mountain hunched over. Several of the people behind us said that it was actually harder to go down on the steps than just walking down the steep slope, and I actually agreed. While the danger of falling and cracking your skull was slightly lessened, by the end of the steps my knees were aching. My In-laws were moving much faster than I was, because I had twisted my ankle. We caught up when Yoshi was let out of the bag and refused to keep pace with them.

Everyone on the mountain was happy when they saw Yoshi. People were surprised to see a dog on the mountain. It’s not a common sight. We didn’t see any other dog on the mountain. We clean up after him, and we leave less of a mess than the average littering Korean (there are never garbage cans) does on our hikes. When we got down from the mountain, we realized why there were no other dogs on the mountain: There were rules that said that you weren’t allowed to bring them because dog feces disturbs other animals.

Yeah, WHAT other animals.

Other than birds, there isn’t ANY wild life on Korean mountains. People trudge so loudly, and it’s so crowded, you can’t see a single animal. This is another was reason Korean hiking is different than what I’m used to in the United States. My father, a hunter, loved to spot animals in the wild while hiking. We would march through woods and on trails trying to spot wildlife in parks. I’ve never seen a wild land mammal in any Korean park I’ve visited, ever. Despite the parks size and the numerous mountains and forests, there is absolutely no wildlife to be seen here. Seriously. You can’t even see a squirrel or a rabbit if you tried. People I’ve asked said it was because of the Korean war. It’s incredibly depressing.

After the hike, we went to lunch at the entrance of the park. We had some lack luster pajeon (large squid and vegetable pancakes) and some smoked duck. The restaurant was crowded despite Koreans being being rather freaked out about the bird flu outbreaks. Duck happened to be the first meal I ate with my Father in law when I met him with my wife a few years ago. He spent most of the meal telling me that I need to go to the mountain and climb for exercise every weekend. We had to put Yoshi on a pole outside the restaurant, but we couldn’t see him from our seats. Every five to ten minutes or so, we would get up to check on him. He was cold and tired from the long mountain hike. We gave him a snack and water.

I had a huge scare when I went out to check on him the first time. He had slipped out of his leash and was running around in the parking lot. He could have been hit, stolen, or run away. He had only just escaped when I called for him, because I found him not far away. He was wearing a shirt, so I tied the leash again through the shirt and made sure he wouldn’t get free while we worked on our sujaebe (dumpling soup). 

This was the hardest exercise Yoshi had ever tired, but he did very well. The only place where he needed to be carried was because of the danger involved to the person holding the leash trying to descend one handed. We got Yoshi back to the car with no problem and cleaned him off the best we could with wet tissues. We had been lucky, as our descent coincided with a light rainfall, but the trail wasn’t that muddy or wet. Yoshi was clean enough to make it to our apartment, where he promptly got a bath

He and I spent the rest of the day napping off our exhaustion.

On Sunday, I went with my dog to purchase some special dog food. Since Yoshi has a no-protein diet to prevent allergies, we must buy all of our dog food at pet stores that carry specialty food. This isn’t a major annoyance, because we have a local veterinary hospital not far from the park we usually walk at. I was concerned that Yoshi had developed an ear condition called "otitis", which is basically an infection in his ear canal. It’s common in his breed. I don’t know the signs of the illness, but I wanted the vet to check to make sure he had no problems.

I went to Macro 24 hour hospital in Weolpyeong-dong, which is next to the second E-Mart location in Daejeon. I decided to purchase the food, and while I was there, I asked Dr. Oh to check my dog’s ears. He quickly took Yoshi back to his desk. He then checked his ears and claimed that he did indeed have otitis. According to the doctor, it was "severe" in his right ear, and he recommended medication over the course of five visits two days apart. I would need to give him medication. as well as shots that would be administered during his subsequent checks at the hospital. This sounded fairly serious.

Something rubbed me entirely the wrong way about the procedure. The usual vet we go to is very good. We only went to Macro because I wanted to pick the food up on a walk. This was the first time I had gone to this hospital alone with my dog, and I was more interested in buying food that his health, since he seemed completely fine. Another thing that seemed strange was the fact that the vet never wiped the table surfaces between examinations, something my other vet was religious about doing. Another warning sign was the fact that the dog was never weighed before he gave me the dosages of his medicine. I’m not a vet, but even I know that you can’t give a little dog the same amount of medicine as a big one.

I was skeptical about his diagnosis, so I talked to my wife about the trip when I returned home with the medicine. When we went to administer his first feeding of medicine, we thought something was very strange. Yoshi had gotten treated for his skin condition in the past. Our previous doctor used antibiotics and steroids, but gave us a strict warning about the dosage due to the strength of the medicine. That was for a full body itch. This was only for his ears, but what we were given at Macro hospital was close to five or six times larger, if not more. The difference in dosage was alarming, and we both thought it was strange. We went back for his check up and got more medicine to cure his ear inflammation.

We fed Yoshi his new food, then we gave him medicine our usual way. We mix his medicine with plain yogurt. Yoshi ate all his medicine and was fine when we put him in the cage at night. When I woke up in the morning, I went in to let him out. He had made a mess in his cage. This was fine, except that instead of simply going to the bathroom, he had vomited thick yellow foam. The last time he had done this, we ran to our usual vet in a panic. We fed Yoshi breakfast, but he vomited repeatedly. Something was wrong.

We called our old vet, and he confirmed out suspicion. Thick yellow foam means that Yoshi’s stomach had been agitated by the incredibly strong medicine. Our old vet recommended we bring in Yoshi for observation. Sick or weakened dogs often die when given too much skin allergy medicine due to its potency.

Oh, hell no.

We packed Yoshi in his traveling bag and got in a taxi we had tissues prepared in case he decided to vomit in the cab. Thankfully, he held down whatever was in his stomach until we arrived at our old vet. He examined Yoshi’s eats with a fiber optic camera. He was completely free of any skin condition. Whatever Doctor Oh at Macro 24 hour hospital had been telling us about his ears being severely inflamed was a complete lie. We wasted 30,000 won on medicine that could have severely injured our dog out of greed from a crooked vet. The odd thing was, Macro 24 hour hospital came highly recommended by someone we knew that took his dogs there exclusively. We only went there due to its location near our house, but no longer. We now have a regular family vet.

Our "Good" vet works at Snoopy Clinic, which is near SaveZone department store, in Dunsan-dong. He’s the most honest, helpful vet we’ve found, and he speaks decent English. He treats dogs very well and is extremely knowledgeable. For new dog owners or foreigners, I’d highly recommend him. The trimming service is also the best we’ve found, and they do not use drugs or recommend sedation to get a decent cut. He doesn’t try to sell snake oil to people looking to take care of their pets, and is respectful of people’s desires while looking out for the welfare of the animals he services.

Owning Yoshi was one of the biggest changes to our lifestyles this year. When I was first told about the plan to purchase a dog for a present for my wife’s father, I was dead set against it. I wanted nothing to do with a plan I knew was doomed to end up with us in care of a puppy. Sure, at the time I thought dogs were cute, as long as they were confined to being a puppy in a window. I had no intention of taking care of one. I didn’t know what being a pet owner entailed, and I certainly didn’t want an animal running around destroying things in my apartment, or worse yet, the apartment itself.

Now, after living with a pet for about eight months, we are a pretty inseparable pair. Yoshi has integrated himself into our lives, and now having him around makes both me and my wife happier than simply being alone. One of the reasons for this is the fact that while he might be a little naughty, overall he’s a pretty good pooch. He’s learned some ground rules for living with us, and he’s not terribly difficult to take care of when we work together. He’s gone from a pile of defecating fur to a nice dog since we’ve owned him.

This means that I’m usually in charge of walking Yoshi around, while the occasional bath or trim is handled by my wife. I usually head out in the morning for a lap with Yoshi around the block. If we have time before lunch, I’ll head down to a park or near the river to let him run. He’s tightly supervised, but this serves as exercise for me. Right now, it’s starting to get cold, but we can still take him outside.

One function of these walks is to keep his funky dung out of the house. He’s gotten very good at bowel and bladder control as he’s grown. While there was a 1 and 3 chance that Yoshi might do something undesirable in the house when we purchased him, now he almost never makes a mistake in the house. He’s pad trained and usually waits to go outside. This was a major concern of both of Yoshi’s owners, so he’s gotten lots of praise for his regular actions.

On walks, he’s starting to control himself around strangers. Right now, it’s a 50% chance that he’ll sit down and patiently wait for the elevator. If someone gives him attention on the elevator, it’s tough to keep him from wanting to jump. He doesn’t bite strangers, but if he got the chance, he’d push every toddler down and lick their faces until they surrendered. Some kids like this, some do not. Keeping him away from the little ones is usually fairly easy. Other people on the street either get ignored, or get lots of attention. Anyone that stops to pet him probably will get jumped on. He can’t be trusted without a leash, because he’ll simply run thinking he’s free. This works in a safe park, but on the street it’s much too dangerous.

He’s smart enough to chase balls and toys, but doesn’t like disc like objects. It’s very gross. He usually keeps people on the computer or couch company while they do their thing, hoping to get their attention long enough for someone to play fetch with him. Since he’s a little dog and our apartment has some places he can run, this helps him get a little exercise even on rainy days. He wears clothes on cold days, and recognizes his leash. He knows never to step in our bedroom, and to wait when we feed him food in a dish until we give him permission to eat. He’s on a no protein diet due to a skin allergy, but on the plus side, will never shed his hair because of his breed.

All and all, having a pet is very rewarding experience. I don’t think I would have been capable of properly taking care of a pet before this year, but now that I’ve had the experience I’m very glad we’ve taking care of Yoshi since purchasing him. Hell, even the security guards don’t mind him. He’s been a constant and loyal companion for these months and I wouldn’t want to live in Korea without him now.

As of now, the weather outside is too cold for Yoshi to stay on our veranda for extended periods of time. We used to keep him on the veranda while we went to work. He could look outside, and even if he made a noise, he couldn’t bother anyone walking by our apartment. Now  we need to keep him indoors as we go to work.

We purchased a cage in preparation for winter a few months ago, and started training him by keeping him in the cage overnight while we sleep. Yoshi no longer has any problems with his sleeping cage, but it’s much too small to keep him inside while we go to work. A solution was to choose a room and make a larger place for Yoshi where he couldn’t destroy anything.

The majority of the computer room was given over to Yoshi. His cage can fit under the large computer desk, and the rest of the room is now his playground while we go to work. We set up a barrier made from an unused clothes hanger turned on its side and taped together to protect the computer, which sits in the lower part of the desk. 90% of the floor is now owned by Yoshi, where I get a small space for my chair to write.

The problem with this new arrangement is that Yoshi is now sitting inside a room that shares the outer wall of the apartment. We are the first apartment on our line, so whenever anyone from our side of the building enters or leaves, they go by our door. When Yoshi hears keys rattling, he sometimes barks. This is a new thing. He’s been nearly silent for months, but now he’s barking at anything outside the door when one of us isn’t home with him. He’s usually quiet when we are both home, but when one of us leaves he barks. This is unacceptable, because it’s the one rule we’ve vowed not to break with the security guard. As long as Yoshi isn’t known as a dog that barks, no one cares that we have him.

There have be several ideas suggested. We’ve been punishing him when he barks, but this doesn’t work well. It’s harder to reward the absence of a negative behavior than to punish a negative behavior. We asked a vet about a training collar. Some collars spray a citrus smell that repulses some dogs when they detect a dog barking. We know someone that swears by his collar, but the vet said they didn’t work on some dogs. Tests with lemon scented items showed that Yoshi loved them, so we have no idea if this expensive product would work.Another idea would be to improve the sound insulation to this room, blocking up some of the window to block the sounds from the outside. I’d like to keep the window free to sunlight however, so I don’t think this is very possible either.

Yesterday, while walking Yoshi outside on our usual route around the apartment, he stopped following me. He sat down and started gnawing on one of his paws. When I tried to urge him onward, he wouldn’t budge. This wasn’t one of his "lazy" or "too hot" sorts of "protests" he tries from time to time. He hadn’t fallen, gotten hit, or stepped on anything unusual. Nothing would have caused him to stop or any particular reason. He seemed to be uncomfortable for some reason. I had to carry him the rest of the way back to the apartment.

When I got him back to the apartment, he was treating one of his hind legs gingerly. That wasn’t an encouraging sign. We needed to leave for work in an hour, and we had a possibly injured dog. No time to go to the vet and still get to work on time. We decided that since one of my wife’s coworkers brings a pet to work, bringing Yoshi and leaving him supervised in the office would be the best thing we could do. We called ahead for permission, and packed his travel bag. My wife took the subway, even though it’s not technically pet friendly. She kept Yoshi in the bag, and the people around her mistook him for a cute doll. He’s very well behaved in his travel bag, so we are lucky.

At work, she said Yoshi was scared to be in a new place, but was as friendly as ever. He spent time in the office while my wife worked. The other teachers are all pet friendly, so no one cared. After work, and another trip on the subway, she dropped the dog off at the vet for overnight observation. He was till walking gingerly on his hind leg, and we were worried about broken bones.

The vet examined him and concluded nothing was broken. The hip, the knee, or ankle might be injured. According to our vet, if this injury becomes serious enough to need surgery, it might cost somewhere in the range of one million won to fix (Approximately 1,000 USD) Ouch.

Yoshi stayed at the vet for the night, which was the first time, barring vacation to the United States, where we were away from the dog overnight. Our house seemed quiet and empty. A lot of our time is spent petting, playing, and talking about our dog. A constant source of entertainment was gone, and possibly seriously injured. The mood was rather sour last night in the house as we looked at our new cage and thought about our missing dog as we went to bed.

This morning we got the call from the vet. Yoshi had nothing broken, and appeared to be walking well again. The vet told us it was likely that his hip or leg could act up again, but for the moment Yoshi seems to be doing fine. To prove how much he’s recovered from yesterday’s nightmare, we actually walked from the vet back home with the dog. It took almost an hour, after stopping for some water breaks, but Yoshi was struggling to go on faster and farther the entire time.

After looking up hip and leg injuries that sound similar, we’ll try to limit Yoshi’s jumping and will help him off furniture or chairs when he’s on our laps. This usually affects older dogs with arthritis, but who knows what caused such a problem with a pup a few months old. We’ll watch him for a few months to make sure he’s recovered fully.  It’s good to have him back in the house. We haven’t let him out of our sights for the entire time, and he’s been in our laps or getting attention all the time.

Here I am, all sappy and worried about my dog’s health. I’ve grown rather attached to the little guy.

With fall soon to arrive, and a pet subjected to cooler temperatures on the veranda by the day, we were forced to think up solutions to a problem before we had a frozen pup come winter. A trip to local pet stores provided no help. We wanted a large cage of some kind with no top, with a way to clean the bottom easily. Since we have a larger apartment than before, we could try to get a slightly larger cage than any of the pet stores had. We also needed something that could be folded up later, and that was portable and light enough to be moved around if needed. Again, we had comfort in mind, as Yoshi would need to stay inside whatever we bought while we were away from work, and any nights that were too cold for him to be outside.
My wife searched the Internet for a cage that meet our needs. Eventually we found one with what we wanted cheaper than any stores in the area even with delivery. Bless the Internet-tubes! The cage arrived while we were at work yesterday, so the security guards took it for us. The large block print lettering that say "DOG CAGE" in might have been a clue that we were planning on keeping our dog for a while, but the guard was too busy about to make his "rounds" to say anything to me when I picked it up.

I set the cage up myself, and the final test was putting the dog inside. Yoshi has a fear of grates and mesh of any kind. He absolutely will not walk on it and avoids anything of the kind when we go outside for walks. The bottom of the cage is similar to what was in the pet store he was born in. If dogs have neurosis, this would be Yoshi’s little quirk. He will not walk on the grate if possible.

I tried a series of experiments. I opened the cage door, placed his food inside, then waited for him to jump inside the cage. He’ll do nearly anything to eat, but he simply stared at the cage. He walked around, stretching out his neck from the door trying to get some of his food from the bowl without having to enter the cage. No luck. He circled the cage looking for a way to get closer without going into it. No luck. Eventually I wanted to see if he would use the door to leave the cage, then we could work on going inside later.  I placed Yoshi in the cage with his pillow and put the food right outside. All he had to do was leap out. Nothing. He was so timid he wouldn’t move off the pillow. Even me tempting him with snacks and affirmative commands did nothing.

The only way for him to get out the door was to take his front paws and get him over the threshold. Then he would hop out with his back legs. If you left the door open the entire time he was in the cage, he would be unlikely to do this himself. He spent the night in the cage last night just as a "test", He started whining, so we pulled the cage over by our bed room door and left it open for him to see us. He was quiet and slept the night silently.

He was a little better today. He got in and out of his cage on a few occasions, but he’s very leery of it. Post-traumatic pet store memories of some kind.

Our security guards, who went as far as suggesting that they would somehow "raid" our apartment to take our dog if we didn’t comply with their pet rules, seem to have had a change of heart recently. We had been walking Yoshi by putting him in a bag, then carrying him down the elevator. Once we got around a corner from the building, we would let him out. Yoshi loved his bag, so it wasn’t that big of a problem. Since the guards didn’t say anything when we carried him out this way, we figured they had calmed on the whole "No Pets" thing, even if it was still posted on the notice board.

For a month they had a warning up in the elevator about how dogs weren’t allowed in the building. One particular guard was always shouting and giving me a hard time about walking Yoshi. We even had conversations with some of the apartment "leaders" that had decreed that there would be no pets!

Now they no longer care at all. We’ve been walking Yoshi now without the bag in the evening and we haven’t been asked about anything. Considering all the hassle we had been going through, this is a nice change for us. We still keep Yoshi under control in the elevator as always, but now we don’t need the bag in addition to the leash.

This is exactly what my wife predicted would happen. She said that the security guards were simply acting tough on behest of some disgruntled tenant somewhere in the building, and that went enough time passed, they’d go back to their usual indifference. The normal security guard spends about 90% of his time doing nothing. Other than picking up packages and chatting with security guards when there is nothing else on television, they sit in their little room. Anything that compels them to actually "guard" or "police" is just an annoyance.

We just had some particularly annoying person in the building that kept the guards on task for an entire month, that’s all.

My wife, ever on the quest to save money and treat our dog well at the same time, ordered a dog shaving electric razor from the Internet. The package came the next day in the mail when no one was home, so our security guard held the package for us. Since our security guard is very "dog unfriendly", the package was delivered with instructions. It had to be wrapped so no one could tell what it was, and the delivery person wasn’t supposed to say where the package was from. Our anonymous brown package arrived, and this was inside:

 

Note the cute long haired Shih Tzu on the package. This is exactly what we are trying to avoid with our dog.

Since Yoshi is a house dog, he spends most of his time chasing a ball around on a faux wood floor. Yoshi slides around when his paw hair grows too long. He also gets dirty when trying to use his bathroom mat, and when we take him for walks he picks up a lot of dirt on his paws. Since the longer hair takes a longer time to dry, he also licks his paws and has an increased chance of infections and skin diseases.

I was feeling a little under the weather today and couldn’t help out much. I had been teaching with a sore throat, and over the weekend I hadn’t gotten enough rest. I spent the entire night restless, and got hardly any sleep. As a result, I was far to tired to help with the shaving procedure. I walk the dog, and she takes care of the fur anyway. It’s just how the division of labor has broken down since we got Yoshi. Still, I’m thankful for her initiative, because otherwise I’d be walking around a mop with feet. I went to sleep in the middle of the afternoon while my wife had decided this was the day she was going give Yoshi’s paws and butt (in typical Korean fashion) a shave. She had already given him a bath, so all she needed to do was fire up the razor and get started.

I didn’t witness the shaving myself, but it went something like this: The razor would be engaged, and Yoshi would freak out. She would spent about two or three minutes trying to get a paw in the proper position, then grab the dreaded "Newspaper of Doom" to keep the dog from biting and running off. Then there would be about ten minutes of cooing and soothing sounds as she calmed the dog down and then the process would start again. Each time, I would wake up, hear the newspaper, the razor, fall asleep, then wake up again when the next cycle started again.

It led to some strange dreams.

Anyway, Yoshi looks good with his paws shaved. He has more traction to move around, won’t get as dirty, and has been calmer now that he isn’t getting chased after with hair cutting tools.