An ordinary dog with mysteries in his life
Play
Chuckie makes a reappearance complete with a name change
Perhaps you remember Chuckie, whom I wrote about last month, the dog who moved into our soi and won everyone’s heart with his friendliness and gentleness.
Chuckie, a medium-sized dog who was a mixture of every breed that’s ever walked the sois, wasn’t special.
You can see dogs like him anywhere in Thailand.
Yet he became so popular that someone put a collar on his neck to discourage anyone planning to steal him.
With his charm, he became a “community dog”. People would feed him, picking up some grilled pork or chicken for him on their way home from work. No one ever adopted him, though, and no one ever gave him appropriate food for a dog.
Then, about the time some workers were trying to catch and eat Mee, the dog belonging to my neighbour, Chuckie disappeared.
People were upset, but no one went looking for him. Although they liked him, they didn’t seem to have invested enough emotion in him to search for him, the way they would have if he had been a household pet.
Besides, he may have just wandered away, following some interesting smell and enjoying the freedom of the road. He was, after all, an un-neutered male, and un-neutered males do wander.
Now, although he seems to have disappeared for good, I still look for him whenever I take my poodle Wan-Wan for her afternoon walk.
And suddenly Chuckie re-appears! He’s really happy to see us, a big smile on his face, his tail wagging happily.
“What happened?” I ask the neighbours. They laugh.
A man came looking for him, claiming to be Chuckie’s owner. He proved it by calling the dog to him by his real name, “Seua”. The dog even knows how to do tricks. When you command him, you have to know his name, though; otherwise, he won’t shake hands or roll over.
The man promises to keep Chuckie - sorry, Seua - in his compound, but this dog is much more intelligent than we realised. He knows how to escape and return to his home away from home, especially around meal-time.
Here are some mysteries.
Seua’s home is about a kilometre away. To arrive at our soi, he has to cross busy roads full of aggressive dogs.
How did he find a tiny soi that would be safe for him, where the “owned” dogs are not allowed to wander, and where soi dogs don’t enter?
More interesting (at least to me) is how the owner was able to find him. It must have taken days of searching up and down the tiny sois in our area. What a lot of love!
I can’t help thinking, though, that if the owner really loved his dog, then he would have Seua neutered. A longer life, not so much wandering - neutering has plenty of pluses.
