Fifth Member of My Family

By Jake J. Nho

Like many families with children, we have a dog. His name is Happy. A very common name, but we thought he would preserve happiness in our family if we named him so.

This is a very little dog. A maltese. If I remember correctly, he is about eight years old, which in human years is about 40 since Koreans, for example, have an average lifespan of 80 years and, I am afraid, Happy will only last for about 17.

The thing about having a dog, big or small, is that he requires a lot of attention. He needs to be fed, on time mind you, washed and clothed. Yes, clothed. Unlike your average mutt, Happy is very selective about what he wears.

Actually, this is not all that terrible. But it is tricky. The rule of thumb was that dogs love water and should enjoy a good bath. Rubbish. I abhor my turn to clean him as he inevitably splashes more water and lather on me than I do on him.

Clever enough, he somehow knows that a bath is in the waiting and it takes half a day (exaggeration) to grab him and get him into the bathroom. He rushes about all over as he tries to avoid his ultimate fate.

And then there is the eating part. Unlike your average dog, Happy will eat up everything in sight. No matter how much.

This poses a particular problem when my family checks into a hotel to relax for the weekend. We tried hiding some of the food so that Happy can feed on it later but this for some reason does not work. The minute we leave, so does the hidden dinner.

We found this to be the case when we had to return home just after departure to check on the gas to make sure it was properly turned off. The dinner was all but gone.

And then there is the little dance that he does when I am trying to feed him. He spins around like it is nobody's business and it is almost dizzying.

I tell him to stop and he does. For about one second. And then he spins around some more, making all kinds of noise with his claws.

He digs into his breakfast and I tell him once again that there is no rush, that he is the only one eating the dog food. He stops for a second and then it is back to business as usual.

There is an interesting thing that he does after breakfast and dinner. He has to take care of business. Every single time. I am trying to teach him how to open the door so he can go about his business on his own. But this has not worked yet.

Unlike in countries like the United States, not many homes in Korea have doggy exits. I am trying to figure out why but I have not quite found an answer yet to this curious difference.

There are many other interesting aspects to Happy. For instance, he loves to get out of the house. This is understandable since we pretend not to have the time to take him on walks.

The thing is that I let him out once in a while and he goes wild. He runs around all over the place and refuses to return to the house when I or other members of my family call him.

No matter. I know a trick. Open the door to the car and he comes bounding, like we are going to leave him behind again as we venture somewhere.

When he was smaller, we used to hide him in our luggage and take him into hotel rooms. But he got larger. Not so large that we can't sneak him around but now he has a tendency to bark. This is not good.

There are hotels that allow you to bring your pet to the room, like the W-Seoul Walkerhill, but they charge you 110,000 won for shampooing the room after a single day. One single day. We are not "Happy" about that.

But having a dog around the house is great. Even though he should not be barking his head off when I get home ― dogs are supposed to do that when strangers approach ― I don't mind. It is a sign that I am finally at a place called home.

We actually had another dog, a cocker spaniel, which was the littlest thing when we first got it. Then, it grew like you would not believe. By the time he was about six months old, he was hunting, jumping around and destroying virtually everything in my house. He had to go.

And we swapped her for Happy.

We are quite happy with Happy. He has some issues but I think we can deal with those. For now, he is quite happy, especially when I feed him the mandarin oranges and bit of biscuits behind my wife's back. Life is good for him.

The writer lives with his family and Happy in downtown Seoul and can be reached at jakenho@hotmail.com.