Introduce my best friend - Ken.

Someone said and I quote that: “if you can sit quietly after difficult news; if in financial downturns you remain perfectly calm; if you can see your neighbors travel to fantastic place without a twinge of jealousy; if you can happily eat whatever is put on your plate; if you can fall asleep after a day of running around without a drink or a pill; if you can always find contentment just where you are… you are probably a dog”. Yes, today I will tell you about my best, perfectly friendly friend - Ken.

Me and her. She always have special greeting for me when I'm back home.
Ken is a 3 year-old girl. She has brown and black-ish fur. She is “chó cỏ” - unknown English name, which is the native breed in Vietnam. This breed is a quite small dog breed, afraid of people and pretty trusty and smart. Up to now, Ken weights around 10kg, 25cm height and 40cm length. She is the smartest and most clever dog I’ve ever raised in my life. And here is the story of how I met her and how we became friends.

Back to 4 years ago I was living in Hanoi for a short-term English course. My mother brought her home without telling me about this. Ken was given to my mom since she was just 1 month old, still needing milk breeding and barely eating hard food. When she came to my house, she couldn’t eat anything, was scared of humans and usually hid behind the door (this is what my mom told me when I was back home after I finished the course). I still remember the first time she met me, I was still a stranger to her, she hid under the sofa but kept barking at me. After a while, when she felt I was not harmful, she left the sofa but was still scared of me, her body was shaking, the eye was full of evasiveness. I named her “Ken”, after a male dog who I lived with through 4 months in Ha Noi. I got used to that name, and used it to call her as a habit. She took it and accepted it. After sometimes I tried and failed, in the end she turned back when I called her name. I was so proud of her at that moment, how intelligent she is. Ah she has some black spots on her tongue, I think it is the signal that proves she is a truly intelligent dog ever I’ve raised.

Ken is quite gentle and sweet. She never rushed to the food even though she hadn't eaten for the whole day and this was the first meal of the day. Whenever I put the food into the bowl, she knew it but watching other people around first then slowly approached the bowl and licked the food as if she enjoyed everything in it. She will eat the leftovers of the meal even if it's the bones or some soup left. She likes fish, shrimp, squid or some other tender seafood, pork, beef, chicken…. but after a while of having 1 kind of food for a long time, she gets bored and gets distant from the bowl of food and then doesn't eat anything. This made my mom feel angry the most.

When she was 2 years old, she started dating guys. The guy ran around the house, waiting for her. Sometimes they sat in front of the gate and looked into my house like this. There is a rice field behind my house. She and her date usually run the small street along the rice field in the sunset light. How romantic it was! I was so jealous of her. haha. She got 2 times pregnant, each time she gave birth to 4 little puppies. You can look at the photos to see how cute they are.

Am I the richest in the world?

This is the end of the happy part of her life. I may continue to talk about her tragedy in my next post. Thanks for your reading my blog to the end.