I do not have a dog but I have a couple of friends that do and they are normally very close to their animals. I think there at times appears to be some sort of dependency issue there that is borderline unhealthy but who am I to judge. I like their dogs and I am just happy that I don't have to take care of them but still get to enjoy their fluffy company when the dogs are around.
Recently, a dog that is rather popular in the expat community went missing and it's been a few days and neither the dog nor the body of the dog, deceased, has been found. This is truly terrible news.
The dog's name is "Sleepy" and he is male and about 3 years old. He is a kind dog that is really happy to see all of us whenever we turn up and he serves as a sort of warning system because there have been several times that for reasons we cannot understand he will just bark at certain people. Then for the most part, those same people will end up being irritating and someone that the rest of us just kind of want them to go away. I love that Sleepy was able to read that about a person long before they would even speak.
Sleepy would always just chill around all of us at a bar that is called "Sleepy Dog" and for the most part he liked to be pet for a bit but wasn't super needy or jumping on people. But Sleepy did suffer from something that I think all dogs suffer from and that was he really wanted to wander and myself and some other people would kind of get on the case of the owners about how they at times just wouldn't know where Sleepy was and they didn't seem all that bothered about it.
Let me tell you why you definitely should be worried about this in Vietnam. This country still has a dog meat trade. Dog meat is still eaten in parts of the country and there are restaurants that specialize in it. I have no idea if this is true or not but apparently Sleepy is the kind of dog that they seek out the most for this sort of thing.
Sleepy went missing last Tuesday at 2am. The CCTV on the pub confirms this. The owner thought nothing of it at the time because his business is near a small park and Sleepy would often go on a little adventure over there to peepeepoopoo, get covered in nettles and then come sauntering back. Sleepy was never gone for very long, until the one time that he was.
It has now been nearly a week since Sleepy disappeared and while at the start a bunch of us were running around to various parts of the city shouting his name and peering down alleyways - I was even peering into people's front gates if I heard a dog barking - but after 6 days I don't think very many people are still looking.
A rather large reward has been offered and the word has been spread all over every FB page and even some Russian and Korean apps to let everyone know that this dog is missing. There are Vietnamese pages have also been filled with notices detailing his name, what he looks like, and the large reward being offered for his return.
The real tragedy of this is that we all kind of know exactly what the situation is with him. He was trapped by urban dog poachers in the middle of the night, was likely tranquilized and is now in a crate with a bunch of other dogs headed somewhere to be processed as food.
I hope there is a special place in hell for the people that do this sort of thing. I can't imagine how heartless a person could be to kidnap someone's pet and then take it somewhere to be killed an eaten. The owners are very distraught over this because even though we don't talk about it, we all know that this is likely the case.
While designer, expensive dogs are sometimes stolen because they are expensive and people want a pet like that, this is not what happens to your run-of-the-mill mongrel like Sleepy. There is only one place that dogs like him end up and it isn't as a treasured guest in someone's garden.
While I hold my tongue because I know they are hurting there is a side of me that is very upset with the owners. They know what this country is all about and they know that dogs are in danger of being kidnapped but they still didn't keep their own dog sequestered in the yard or on the property.
It seems to me that if you live in a country where it is well known that dogs are kidnapped for food that you wouldn't just let your friggin dog wander around unattended. Yet that is exactly what happened in this situation. The justification of "he always came back before" doesn't apply because that is not what we are dealing with here most likely. We are dealing with a criminal group of people that intentionally target dogs that are wandering around at night and then capture them.
I don't like to think about how scared Sleepy is right now and how abandoned he feels. If there are doors in his life he is probably waiting for a familiar face to come along and set him free and he is likely extremely afraid and sad and will remain that way until he is eventually killed.
The owners of Sleepy, I don't think they should get another dog. They are my friends but I am upset with them for their carelessness. Of course I am more upset at the actual criminals and I wish I could get my hands on them to slowly torture them to death for their crimes.
but at the end of the day the responsibility of keeping your dog safe in an environment like this one lies on YOU, the human owner.
I will be very disappointed in them, perhaps to the point of no longer visiting their establishment if they simply turn around and get another dog.
