A fun way to learn a new trick
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After a stay with her owner's relatives, part-chow mee returns home
MY NEIGHBOUR Khun J is usually happy and out-going, exuberantly screaming all over our soi. For such a small person, she certainly knows how to yell, shouting across the soi to her elder sister, down the soi to neighbours, and at her dog, Mee, a part-chow.
Mee, as I’ve mentioned before, is equally noisy, her deep, loud bark alerting anyone that a cat and/or dog is nearby or that a human stranger is walking down the soi.
This morning, though, J is almost silent. “Mee is gone,” she tells me unhappily. The dog has moved to the large home of J’s nieces and nephews – “but only for three days,” J says firmly.
Meanwhile, in her home, J wanders around aimlessly. With no need to clean up after her dog, or to take her for walks, or even to prepare her food, J has much less to do.
At night, she tells me, she can’t sleep, fearing that any noise she hears will be a burglar trying to break in during Mee’s absence.
You know, even I have begun to miss this dog. Perhaps I’ve grown used to her noisy barking in the morning. She’s so predictable. I know her special bark at the two soi cats who treat my house like a cat hotel. I even know where they are by watching which way Mee’s nose is pointing when she barks at them.
I also know that Mee is either sleeping in the patio or inside J’s house on the first floor, never higher. This dog has never learned to climb stairs.
If J wished, she could train Mee to climb those stairs. Her method, though, is to try to drag the dog by her leash up the stairs step by step, not the greatest way to train an animal that weighs more than you do.
I’d train Mee paw by paw with lots of treats and gentle encouragement. J’s screams, though, are not very gentle. Perhaps J doesn’t want her dog upstairs. There would just be more messes to clean up, I suppose.
J is quite excited as she waits for Mee to return, but by the fourth day, the dog is still at the other house.
“The children love her a lot,” J says unhappily. “They’ve asked for a few more days.”
In fact, J seems rather broken-hearted. The last time Mee stayed at that house, J would talk to her over the phone, and Mee would respond, barking to return home. This time, the dog seems more interested in playing with the kids than in a phone call.
As the days continue into weeks, J becomes even more depressed, then suddenly determined. I hear her screaming over the phone, and the next day, Mee returns home – but with two surprises.
With all her exercise, I expected her to have lost a bit of the fat she’s put on under J’s constant feeding. Instead of a new, slimmer version of a formerly fat Mee, however, she looks as if she’s put on even more weight.
Alas: whether you live in a big house or a small one, people still enjoy feeding their favourite animals all the time, and J’s nieces and nephews are no different.
The other surprise is really a surprise. As I clean my second-floor patio, I suddenly find Mee smiling at me through the fence. Yes, she’s learned to climb stairs.
She was playing with the kids, J explains, and when they ran up the stairs, she simply followed.
Mee wasn’t exactly trained; she only did what she wanted to do.
