I would like to tell you three stories from my own experience.
One is about my own family.
When I just graduated, I lived with my boyfriend for a while. One of my best friends lived in the same town as my boyfriend. Every day when my boyfriend was at work, my best friend would come to his house to play with me.
That day, as soon as my best friend came in, she angrily asked me if I wanted to keep a dog. Her neighbor had a very small puppy, and he treated it very badly. He would feed it when he remembered, and not feed it for several days when he didn’t. So my best friend often went to see it and bring it some food; but he often beat it. My best friend could often hear the puppy’s screams at home.
She couldn’t stand it, so she went to the neighbor and said that if she didn’t like it, she could keep it. The neighbor not only disagreed, but also kicked the puppy several times in front of her, meaning that I can beat my dog however I like, and you have no right to interfere.
My best friend was furious and came to encourage me to keep a dog, saying that if I wanted to keep it, she could steal it away, otherwise it might be beaten to death at his house one day. She also emphasized that although it was just an ordinary dog, it was very smart and spiritual, and it would be a pity if it was abused to death.
I was also very indignant at what she said, and I decided that she could send it to me at any time. So that night, after my bestie went home, she really stole the puppy and sent it to my boyfriend’s house while the neighbors were not at home.
My boyfriend can’t say that he likes or dislikes small animals. Since I want to keep it, I will do as I please. Except for occasionally playing with it during meals, I don’t have much interaction with it. But I think it is indeed a smart and well-behaved little guy in my daily observation, and I like it more and more. It
looked skinny and malnourished when it came, but I soon raised it into a round ball. Maybe it was afraid of being abused by the previous owner, and it always behaved very cautiously, which made people feel distressed. I often stroked it and talked to it, and slowly its personality became more and more lively.
One day, my boyfriend was on vacation, and my bestie made an appointment in advance to have dinner at her house that day. We took the dog to my bestie’s house. I thought I would hold it in my arms when we were almost at her house, in case the neighbors found it and recognized it.
But halfway through, a man on a bicycle had already passed us, but he stopped and looked back when he saw the dog. He turned around and stared at it, muttering: This seems to be the dog that my family lost a while ago! He also asked us where the dog came from, and called it.
I was a little nervous at the time, afraid that it would be embarrassing if someone recognized it; but looking at Niuniu (the name I gave it)’s reaction… I was amused by it… It didn’t even look at the man, as if it didn’t hear him calling it, and walked forward by my feet as if nothing had happened.
But I know that it not only recognized who this person was, but also a little nervous, and deliberately pretended not to know him.
Because from what I know about it during this period, it has a very friendly personality. Even if it is a stranger, as long as I talk to it, it will go up and smell it, and then wag its tail to show friendliness. If
a stranger shows interest in it, it will even rub against the person, wag its tail vigorously and circle in place.
It has never happened before that someone talked to me and called it, but it acted as if it didn’t see anything.
But this helped me out. I answered the man: I just bought it from another place, and secretly said to him: If it is your dog, how could it not recognize you?
The man naturally had no way to explain, so he could only continue to call it and even wanted to reach out to touch it, but it avoided him without leaving a trace, and still didn’t recognize or see him.
After the man left, my boyfriend felt surprised about Niu Niu for the first time: This little guy is so smart, he actually pretended not to know the original owner. Was it abused before?
From that time on, my boyfriend also began to pay attention to Niu Niu, this little dog. But what really changed his view of dogs was an incident that happened a year later.
After living in my boyfriend’s house for a while, my father helped me find a job in the city, and asked my uncle to recruit my boyfriend to his factory. So my boyfriend and I rented a small house near his unit in the city, and lived a life of a small family of three with our Niu Niu.
When we were at work, Niuniu was alone in the house, but fortunately, my boyfriend rarely worked overtime and had two days off a week, and I had to work in shifts, so I had plenty of time to spend with her. When I was resting, I would take her to the surrounding suburbs for an outing if the weather was good. The owner of a small restaurant nearby liked her very much, and every day he would save the leftover meat dishes for her. As a result, she was always the roundest and shiniest among the three of us…
That period should have been her happiest days.
My boyfriend was also getting more and more used to her being a member of the family through his daily care and interaction with her, but up to this point, he still regarded her as an accessory that existed because of her owner’s love. It was not until a stormy night not long after that that we really regarded her as an independent, intelligent and spiritual individual…
I forgot what happened that day, but anyway, we had a big fight, the most intense fight since we fell in love. I proposed to break up, and he said something like, “It’s up to you if we break up.” I turned around, opened the door, and rushed out…
There was thunder and lightning outside, and the wind and rain were strong. I didn’t care and ran a long way. I ran for about ten minutes and arrived at a place that was unfamiliar to me. (There are many alleys in that area, and we usually only take a fixed route and are unfamiliar with the rest of the terrain.) The rainstorm was getting heavier, mixed with lightning and thunder, and he showed no signs of chasing me. I was angry, cold, and heartbroken. I sat down against a roof and cursed him a thousand times in my heart.
About ten minutes later, there was a dog barking suddenly – it was so clear in the dark and empty rainy night, and soon I saw that familiar head and the figure of my boyfriend behind it.
The moment I saw him, I was half relieved. Of course, I still had to put on airs and make things clear. But he said one sentence and I gave up: You are all wet, and I am wet now too. Even if you are not afraid of catching a cold, look at Niu Niu, her fur is all wet, and she is most likely to catch a cold!
So I went home immediately and dried her first. We took a shower, changed clothes and went to bed. She still slept in the nest beside the bed, looking up at me and my boyfriend from time to time, and I also reached out and touched her from time to time… My boyfriend said: I have decided to be Niu Niu’s father from today.
I thought he should apologize to me and not be angry with me, but I didn’t expect that the first sentence he said was this; I didn’t expect him to say this, because when I usually regarded myself as Niu Niu’s mother, he was very reluctant to say that he was Niu Niu’s father, and he never agreed to it directly.
He always believed that pets are pets and people are people, and they should not be confused. Moreover, my boyfriend is from the countryside. In the education he received since he was a child, including that of his parents (still the same), they all believe that dogs are animals, livestock, and are not much different from the cows, sheep, and pigs raised at home.
Before we started dating, he quite liked to eat dog meat – even though he knew that the dog meat did not come from a decent source and might have been stolen from someone else’s house, he didn’t care. They are all animals anyway.
After we got together, especially after I raised Niu Niu, he slowly began to feel the difference between “dogs” and pigs, sheep, and cows, but that was all.
So when he said he wanted to be Niu Niu’s father, my first reaction was: Is this a roundabout way of apologizing to me?
But it’s not. Because he gave the reason:
You are angry, and I am even angrier. I think I can’t spoil you too much, so I don’t want to chase you at all. It was Niuniu who saw that I didn’t chase you, and kept biting my trouser leg, dragging me to the door. When I got to the door, she rushed into the rainstorm, turned back and barked at me, waiting for me while running forward. On such a day, if it wasn’t for her leading the way and waiting for me to urge me after running a few steps, I wouldn’t know where to find you… Niuniu is usually very timid and afraid of thunder, and she won’t go out on rainy days, but today she kept urging me. I have never seen such a dog, and I don’t know that a dog can do this? It doesn’t look like a dog, it looks like a person… Many people are not as smart and loyal as it.
From that day on, my boyfriend didn’t change his view of Niuniu, the dog, but his view of the “dog” population. He never ate dog meat again.
People who have never raised dogs, or people who have never taken dogs seriously, it is difficult for them to experience it firsthand that dogs are different from other domestic animals. But once they feel the unique trust and loyalty, the shock they bring may be greater than ours.
Actually, I don’t really want to recall Niu Niu.
Because Niu Niu is both happy and sad to me, and more of a memory of self-blame and guilt.
But because of her crucial influence on my boyfriend, I think it also represents “a human who doesn’t like dogs vs. a loyal dog” – in the end, the dog changes humans and the ending in a special way.
Why I feel guilty, it all started after I got married and got pregnant with my boyfriend.
(I want to make a digression here. I now firmly believe that whether it is raising a pet or having a child, you must not give birth/raise it easily before making thorough preparations.)
During my pregnancy until the baby was one year old, Niu Niu followed us to enjoy the wonderful life of an “eldest daughter”. You can tell by its body shape… It’s not round, it’s square… It eats so well that its belly is almost dragging on the ground; and because it has always been treated kindly by humans, it is very affectionate, shaking its head and wagging its tail happily every day…
After the child was one year old, I had to officially start working, and my boyfriend (now my husband) also had to work hard, and neither of us had much time to spend on Niu Niu or even the child.
My mother-in-law came to help us take care of the child, but soon she said she was not used to the pigeon cages in the city and wanted to take the baby back to the countryside.
After much consideration, we decided to let Niu Niu go back to my husband’s hometown with the child – the in-laws’ home with a large yard and two-story building. My
husband and I have been working hard on our careers here, and we take time to go back to see them once a month.
Because the time we go back is very tight every time, most of the time is spent with our son. In particular, because my mother-in-law is not very good at cooking, every time she goes back, she will find that the child has a cold/fever/taking medicine/hanging water. In this case, there is even less time left for Niu Niu.
Many times, when my husband and I returned to his house, Niu Niu rushed out to greet us. After we touched and hugged it, we hurried to find our son. It was not until the next day when we left that we sat in the car and watched Niu Niu running after the car all the way, and we felt regretful: this time we didn’t have time to play with Niu Niu again!
During that time, we always felt regretful about our son and Niu Niu. But we always thought that it would be fine after this period, and good days would be behind…so we didn’t care about the separation.
(Many young people have thought this way.)
It was almost the end of the year, and my husband and I were very busy. We usually find time to go back every month, but that time we hadn’t been back for three months. First, we couldn’t spare the time, and second, we wanted to take a break during the Chinese New Year so that we could have a few more days off.
On the day we went back three months later, the first thing we did after we got home was to accompany our son and take him to eat and play. We didn’t see Niu Niu—my mother-in-law said that Niu Niu was often not at home recently, probably because she went to play with a neighbor’s dog. She would be back later.
We didn’t care. At eight or nine o’clock in the evening, after we went upstairs to sleep, we suddenly heard someone knocking hard on the door downstairs. My mother-in-law was sleeping downstairs. She asked first: Who is looking for me? No one answered. My husband went downstairs and asked: Who is knocking at the door? Who is it? If you don’t say anything, I will call the police!
The three of us took mops, sticks, and shovels and hid behind the door. My husband repeatedly asked who was outside, but no one answered. He pulled the bolt and opened the door. When we were ready to beat the bad guys, the black, shaking head, and bright-eyed little guy rushed into my arms…
Biting my clothes and rubbing my husband’s feet, my mother-in-law said: No wonder I haven’t seen it until now! It must be so excited when it smelled your scent when it ran out to play!
Yes, it was very excited, so it kept hitting the door with its body… We all thought someone was hitting the door hard, but who knew it was it hitting the door with its little body?
My husband and I were shocked again that day. After touching it for a long time, we agreed that when the house in the city was renovated, we would take the baby and Niuniu back as soon as possible.
But before the Chinese New Year, a few days before New Year’s Eve, my mother-in-law called us and said Niu Niu was poisoned to death!
My mother-in-law’s sobbing made me speechless. My husband was even more speechless.
This was our Niu Niu’s short life.
Now when I think about it, I feel that it was our own inability to take responsibility. Niu Niu, who trusted and relied on us so much, how could she be poisoned to death if we hadn’t left her in the countryside?
After Niu Niu passed away, I didn’t keep a dog for many years. I
felt that I was unworthy.
It was not until the actual conditions allowed me to have enough time to accompany her that I got this little guy who has been with me for eight years. In the past eight years, I have never been apart except for business trips abroad.
I hope it can accompany me for another eight years. Of course, the longer the better.
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