A great deal of my life centers around ensuring the happiness of my doggy friend and roommate, Nadi. She is a Shih-Tzu mix and is and has been an absolutely wonderful life-partner. We do as much as we can together and unless I don't have a choice, I always take her out of the house with me whenever I go anywhere.
Here she is staring at me in a half-awake sort of way and she does this if I have been awake for more than an hour and haven't taken her out for her morning walk yet. She eventually gets a bit frustrated and will playfully attack my feet to kind of let me know that it is TIME FOR WALKIES! I don't give in all the time because I don't want to reward this sort of behavior. As much as I love my doggo, I make the rules and we have to work around my schedule. I have met people who always give in when their dog does something to indicate it wants to do something and by rewarding such behavior you are only encouraging it to happen more often until you reach a point where it is just the norm. Of course the dog almost always wants to go outside!
Time for a dog meme
This meme is a bit cruel but I found it funny regardless. I know that if I was faced with a situation where I could only save any of my friends or my dog, I would feel bad about it later but I would definitely choose my dog. I did find the comment after the survey to be very funny although I am sure the person is just trolling. People love their dogs a lot folks, that's something you will just have to accept.
These two dogs I call them "Piggy" and "Giraffe" because the long haired chihuahua is quite fat and makes pig grunting noises and the calm Shih-Tzu in the background there has an abnormally long neck. These are the pets of the woman I know in my building who I think isn't the best dog mama. These dogs rarely go outside and just stay in her small condo (which is exactly the same as my own) almost all the time. She has been in this building for months and I have never seen her ever take either one of them for a walk. She is an alcoholic which is fine because almost everyone that lives here is, but there is absolutely nothing stopping a person from bringing their dogs to the local pub. When I turned up at this pub with Nadi and saw that her dogs were not there I got a bit upset with her and told her to "go get your fucking dogs! They stay indoors all the damn time!" She reluctantly complied and when the dogs got there I was even more disappointed in the owner because they were both clearly starved for attention and they both smelled very bad. I have no sympathy for a person that is at the pub all the time complaining about how they don't have enough time to look after their dogs but they somehow find the time to drink at the pub for 4 hours every single day.
Urgh.... We'll move on before I get too worked up about that.
Pet cafes are very popular all over the world and while I do not know which country this is even from there are now coffeeshops where you can get a hooman coffee and they will also serve a dog friendly drink that has no caffeine in it. I am sure a human would find this drink disgusting but mostly it is just for a funny photo.
While Nadi is not much of a chewer, she will at times find something and decide to pop it in her mouth. She has much more restraint than most dogs but will succumb to the pressure of curiosity every now and then. She also follows me every time I go to the bathroom like "what are you doing in there?" Of course she always watches me whenever I eat something and if she is in the other room and hears me opening something wrapped in plastic she will soon be at my feet looking at me like "soooo, what are WE having now?"
Vietnam can be a very dangerous place to have your dog wander around and not just because of the crazy traffic but also because for reasons I do not understand, there are people that put poison out wrapped in something that dogs find irresistible. I can't imagine the level of cruelty that a person reaches where they just want to kill any animal that gets nearby but that does seem to be the case here in Vietnam. Therefore, when I walk Nadi and she pauses to sniff something for too long I pull away at her if it looks even remotely like something she might try to put in her mouth.
Nadi doesn't know it yet, but today is one of the most dreaded days in her otherwise joyful and luxurious existence. We are going to go on what at first appears as though it will be just a long walk, but we are actually going to the dog haircut salon. This is something that we must do every 3-4 weeks because her hair gets too long. It is really hot right now so long hair makes her uncomfortably hot even on short walks so even though I think she looks great with long hair, it is something that is required if we are going to continue to do stuff outdoors. I tried to take her down to the beach yesterday, which is a tradition on days before haircuts, but we got a big rainstorm and that put that out of the question. Shhh... she'll never know if you don't tell her! She will be put through 2 hours of what she probably considers to be doggy torture today but it has to happen. When I return there will be lots of treats for her so I think in the end that she thinks it is worth it.