::A Geek in Korea::

Yoshi!

Since today is a local election day in South Korea, everyone has the day off. My wife and I went to the voting booth early in the afternoon. She went to vote, I went to look. After she voted, she went over to her aunt’s house. Together with her mom and aunt, they prepared some of the grandmother’s maesil for juice later in the summer.  The wild maesil plums are put into a air tight jar with brown sugar and  white sugar and sealed for fifteen or more days. The resulting syrup will make a refreshing drink this summer when the temperatures get hot.

While they were preparing the seven jars for the summer, two cousins came over to play with Yoshi. They adore dogs, but their aunt doesn’t currently allow them to have one. They played with Yoshi, who took to them well. These are the first "new" people he’s gotten to play with since we took him home. They ran him around the veranda for a while. Then we got out Yoshi’s transport box, some food, cleaning supplies. We took the dog with us for a picnic at their father’s landscaping nursery in the country.

This was Yoshi’s first trip outside that wasn’t a trip to the vet. He still needs three shots to be allowed outside completely. We were careful about where he walked and what he could interact with since he wasn’t immunitized. Who knows how well we did.

We ate some very nice pork on a homemade grill out beneath the trees and sky. I’m not sure what it is with Koreans and barbaque grilling, but we had a ridiculous amount of meat. Two or three kilograms or more perhaps. They kept telling me to eat more and more, but eventually I got to the stage where I couldn’t even look at pork without cringing.  We put Yoshi back in the box for the night to keep him from being eaten by mosquitos. Everyone enjoyed peeking at the dog to see what he was doing. He seems to be popular with the relatives.

We got dropped off at our apartment and planned to wash the dog. I got deputized into shampoo and wash duty. Yoshi doesn’t fight too much, but he hates getting his face washed. For reasons unknown to me, my toothbrush was relagated to his "face brush". I get a new brush to myself, thankfully, and I made sure the old brush stays far away from the bathroom just in case.

The day started out well, but that only lasted as long as the time it took me to wake up and pull back the curtains to our veranda.Our dog, Yoshi, who had no signs of illness when we put him in his bed last night, had soiled the floor of the veranda completely, with every possible bodily fluid known to dog-kind. It was foul, but worst of all was the look on the dogs face. He didn’t know what was going on either.

Today was already designated "wash the dog" day, anyway, so we got started a little early. I got veranda duty, while the wife got to drown wash the dog. We had just purchased a special mop for the veranda so finished early and started looking up what might be affecting the dog. There was a potential virus threat, and lots of lists of things to do. Universal to all the advice I found was the fact that a puppy of two months needed professional medical attention in his condition due to the threat of dehydration.

We mobilized a plan. We’d go to the puppy store/hospital we purchased the dog at and get the treatment he needed. We saw that the dog store didn’t open for an hour, so we got to witness dog retching for the first time. The joys of first time puppy-hood! When we were sure the dog store would be open, we grabbed an old care package box, once sent by Mother to keep me from being homesick, but now used to transport a shih tsu with a leaky ass.

I was filled with a bit of urgency when we left the apartment. Partly because I didn’t want the dog to have complications, but also because I didn’t want to be trapped in a taxi with a dog that couldn’t control it’s functions. We were heading in one particular direction, so when a taxi passed the other way, we sort of gave him a "Hey, turn around" sort of motion. He drove right by, made no recognition of us, and didn’t turn around anywhere we could see. We figured he missed us, so when a taxi heading our way happened by, we jumped in and told him to head to the hospital.

As we approached the light at the end of the block, the taxi driver we had flagged but had been ignored by pulled up next to us. He had his window down and started cursing at me in Korean. "Hey you F******* Foreigner! ***** You can’t wave me down ***** and then not ********* wait to get in my ********* taxi!"…or something similar.

We had no idea he was going to turn around! He didn’t honk his horn or even turn his head! Had he even SLOWED DOWN, we probably would have waited, but the finer points of taxi etiquette were missing considering the sick dog. It’s not like I was going to get in his cab to make it up to him now that he was cursing at me anyway. When I made sure we weren’t going to have to worry about him following us, I gave him the one fingered salute and an hearty curse of my own. Not my finest moment in international diplomacy.

The entire trip to the pet store I sort of expected to be hauled out of the taxi and beaten in the street by this man. The taxi driver we rode with downplayed everything and said that people get stressed when they miss a fare due to how many taxis are on the road and how competitive people are. When we got out of the taxi near the pet store, a driver trying to squeeze by to get another fare around the corner blared his horn. I jumped, thinking it was the same driver I had pissed off early. Thankfully it was just some other rude taxi driver and no one I had caused direct annoyance to.

The pet store/ hospital was a complete disaster. The first few hours they let the dogs run around the store for exercise. The vet wasn’t going to be into the store until noon at the earliest, which was two hours later than we were willing to late. The dogs were running around, defecating everywhere, sniffing each other, and just making a mess. Clearly there were many possible disease vectors in the store to keep a weakened dog in the store. (Hey, Thanks Microbiology 121! I remembered something! )

We made a decision to trust a coworker that had told me about an animal hospital somewhat closer to our house. My coworker swore by this particular vet, so we went over to visit and see what he could do for Yoshi.  By this time, the dog was shaking and clearly weak. We grabbed another taxi without incident, and by this time I had stopped locking to doors at every light for fear I would be tracked down and cursed at by the rogue taxi driver in the morning.

The vet at the animal hospital was much more professional and seemed to know what he was talking about. He even had some hearts with worms displayed in jars, which was gruesome but cool. In the course of a thirty minute chat about our dogs health he managed to stick three long tube like devices up the poor dog’s ass.

Yoshi was tested for a virus, which was thankfully negative.The vet recommended an IV drip and some medicine, along with special food for a day or two.
It was thankfully a less costly procedure than we had both imagined, and not nearly as serious as we expected. The dog still needs some extra care, and I’ve got to give him two more doses of Pepto Bismol like medicine, but thankfully the dog isn’t emptying at both ends anymore.

While it might have seemed that I was unwilling to take the responsibility for the dog, which I was, when it came plain that no one at my Parents-in-laws was going to be capable of taking care of it properly, I accepted that we needed to do was take Yoshi into our home and care for it the best we could. Perhaps my patience has grown considerably in the last year, but I actually don’t mind the dog….much.

He’s cute, doesn’t bark, and is as friendly as you can ask for in a pet. We’ve taught him to sit in two weeks, and we are working on a few other commands too. He generally stays to the veranda and doesn’t bother me except when I have to clean up his messes from time to time. When I can actually take him outside (post shots), I’ll even consider the dog a positive if he gets me exercising more. As long as his health doesn’t become a prohibitive factor in keeping him, I won’t mind having him around for a while.

I can’t stand dogs. I’ve never had any emotional attachment to a dog ever. If this makes me a cold heartless bastard, so be it. My family never purchased a dog in my childhood, seeing as all the outdoor pets we ever owned were quickly run over on the interstate road next to our house. We were never, ever permitted to have indoor pets other than fish, so the whole "animal empathy" emotional connection people have, I lack. I peeled far too many of my own pets off the side of the road for burial to care.

That being said, I did actually assist in the purchase of a canine today.

My father-in-law has been depressed recently since he’s been out of work. In a bid to cheer him up, my wife decided she was going to buy a dog today for his birthday. He has a long history of bringing animals home, only to be forced to give them up. Ironically enough, the last pet he tried to domesticate was a fowl of some sort while my wife still lived at home.  Due to her paralyzing fear of birds, my father-in-law’s last pet lasted only a day. He’s tried to get puppies in the past, but sadly his last dog ran away.

We went to the local pet stores to see what was in stock. At the second store, we happened across a shih tsu that caught our eye. My wife went into bargaining mode and happened to get the dog, food, a brush, a water bottle stand, shampoo, ear medicine, and bone chews for under the original price. The price of the dog didn’t bother me, nor did the idea of buying a gift for her father on his birthday. The simple fact that it was a dog did cause a lot of concern.

The agreement was that the dog was not going to stay at our house longer than a few hours today. It was a gift for her father, and we wouldn’t be keeping it. I also made her promise I didn’t have to take care of any of the dog’s business while it was with us. I don’t like cleaning up after anyone other than myself, and I only do that when absolutely necessary. I am not, by any sense of the words, a "dog person".

We hailed a taxi driver by hiding the dog in my wife’s arms as I waved. Since the dog was so small, we didn’t have any problems. By the time we got out of the taxi, my wife was already talking about keeping the puppy.

She and I both had never had a dog before. We needed to keep the dog at our house until we could both bring it over to her father’s place later in the evening. I made a barricade in the veranda that must have seemed huge to the tiny puppy. We found some old tennis balls for it to play with. We got the water bottle set up, fed it, and played with it before going to work.

The entire time, I had this gnawing feeling of loathing, as I knew that every second that dog stayed in our house, it was going to be more difficult to pry it out of my wife’s hands to give away. The dog passed the noise test, as it never barked, it was fairly cute, and it didn’t eat much. The only variable would be what it would do when we were both away at work. How much would it destroy?

My wife tried bargaining with me. She said she was going to keep it, and take the entire responsibility of taking care of it. Then she defiantly declared she was going to keep it despite her previous promises to me otherwise. She said she wanted more time to adjust to having a dog, seeing if she liked it. I caught her starting to use "puppy talk" in her language. I stood firm and denied every opportunity for the dog to stay. It was not staying in the house tonight.

I felt bad doing it, and it’s not because of the dog either.

My wife has told me about her desperately poor childhood. She didn’t have enough food to eat from day to day, let alone have enough money to ever have a dog. She always wanted to own a dog, as it was a sign that you were rich enough to pay for not only yourself, but a pet as well. It was a sort of status she never had before, and here I was asking her to give it up after only a few hours.

By the time I went to work, she and I had text messaged each a few times. I listed out the numerous reasons why pet ownership is not a good idea for us. I had second and third opinions from the people at work and multiple Internet sources about the breed. We purchased the dog with no real insight on what it takes to raise a dog, and the more I read, the more I thought, "Hell no. I’m not doing anything of that."

I had to be the rock in the storm of puppy cuteness.

I won out in the end, and we headed over to her parent’s apartment after work with the dog. By the time we got there, her father was already asleep, so we basically woke him up and stuck a puppy in his face. He liked the gift, or so I was told his reaction was something of pleasure. The man is makes Spock look passionate, so I don’t know if he was overjoyed or not. The comment out of his mouth was uttered by everyone in the receiving household," What about the fur?"

The real test happens to be the mother-in-law. She liked it "well enough" I suppose, but I don’t know what to expect the next time I see the house. This woman cleans up enough at home, and adding a puppy seems like it will just add to her dervish of cleaning responsibilities. She did seem to enjoy playing with the puppy. Of course, playing with this puppy means walking around cleaning up after it while the dog tried to bite her Achilles tendon. (Aww, it’s trying to make me crippled! How cute!)

If I had to do it over again, i would not buy a dog as a surprise gift ever again. The chance that her family could have rejected the gift seemed high, and this was one deal we couldn’t get a refund on. Also, the more my wife played with the dog, the more she wanted her own, or to keep it for herself. Plus, it’s a dog, and those things stink. The probability that this dog will take up residence at my abode in the future is almost guaranteed. I just know we’re going to end up with this dog on our hands, and I want none of it. Visitation is much, much better. If her parents had any inklings of an empty nest before, let it be filled with the dog. I can only hope.

I just want a house that doesn’t smell like fecal matter. Is that so much to ask?