Puppy Love

Be Ye Warned: This is a heartbreaking tale, especially if you are an animal lover. I'm just sayin'.

So there I was in Hanoi, attempting to complete this Lonely Planet walking tour (which, as I mentioned previously, I did not), and the walk took me down this fabulous little alleyway where there there were all kinds of different numbers graffitied (is that a word??) onto pale yellow walls, below bright red shutters, under a tremendous tangle of power lines that had attached themselves to all available surfaces like weeds or ivy or scar tissue. The alleyway led to an absolutely insane intersection where the street names all blurred together and I suddenly found myself lost.

One thing that I need to mention before I continue this story is that it was absolutely FREEEEEEZING in Hanoi that weekend. Granted, it was nothing compared to what my friends in Massachussets had to endure during the same weekend with a blizzard and all, but still, I was in no way prepared for this cold, damp weather. I had not checked any weather reports before leaving, as I assumed that every other place in Southeast Asia would be a blazing inferno like Bangkok. And while I did remember that Vietnam had been somewhat cooler and more cloudy than Bangkok when I went there last April, it just didn't seem to make sense that two countries so close to one another could vary so extremely in temperature. So needless to say I did not pack a whole lot of warm clothing. I had only a thin hoodie and pashmina, both which I packed as an afterthought when contemplating the frigid temperatures of airplanes. I absolutely froze my ever-lovin' hiney off.

So....I was at this absolutely crazy intersection trying not to get run over by motorcycles and cyclos and desperately trying to find a street that did not appear to exist (was it a secret passageway, a la Diagon Alley??) when I passed a makeshift pet shop. And I say makeshift because it was essentially a hole in the wall with a bunch of crappy metal cages in front, all directly in the wind. In the cages were mice, birds, turtles, two kittens, and a tiny little puppy that I believe was a chihuahua. All of these animals were freezing, but they at least had other animal companions with which they could curl up into a ball, or onto which they could hogpile until each cage seemed to hold an unidentifiable mass of fur or feathers. However, not the puppy. The puppy was all by himself, shivering violently and whimpering, and he had nothing but a thin pair of boxer shorts to keep him warm.

"The puppy is freezing!" I said to the proprietor, who simply shrugged because he didn't understand a word I was saying. I tried to communicate in gestures that the puppy needed something warmer, but again, the response I received was a shrug. I could not take the sight of the puppy shivering, so I asked to hold him. The proprietor shook his head, only giving in after I put my hands together as if begging, and my eyes started to well up with tears. He finally nodded, and I reached into the cage and retrieved the shivering little bundle.

I wrapped him up in the end of my pashmina and squeezed him to me. His little nose was ice cold against my chin as he attempted to cover my face in puppy kisses. And then I proceeded to bawl. There I was, on a random corner on a street whose name I would never be able to pronounce, holding a shivering puppy, and crying. The other owners of the shop cautiously gathered around me and, seeing that I was not going anywhere for awhile, brought out a stool for me to sit on as I warmed the puppy and tried to avoid leaking tears and snot all over him, for that would not have helped matters much.

The shopkeepers and I were mutually puzzled by the other's behavior. I don't think they understood why I was making such a fuss over a puppy, and I didn't understand how they could let the puppy shiver like that. I felt so incredibly helpless as I held the little guy, stroking him and trying to get his heart rate down. I knew that there was ultimately nothing more I could do for him except keep him warm in that moment. I couldn't take him home with me, nor could I try to convince anyone else to buy him. I had to resist the encroaching feelings of rage and hatred that I could feel hovering at the edges of my emotional system, threatening to fuzz it all over like a swarm of bees.

I grew up in a place where dogs have their own winter wardrobes. I grew up in a place where people had children who were not starving, where survival and making ends meet was not a daunting and frightening task on a day to day basis. A friend of mine who used to live in Bangkok would make the same point whenever I would be near tears while looking at the stray dogs everywhere: when you live in a place where people are starving to death on the sidewalk, animals take a lower position on the totem pole of priorities. I realized that I really had no right to judge these shopkeepers, that I can't possibly understand what their lives have been like, that sometimes the differences among people--though mostly beautiful and fascinating--can be difficult to sit with. The puppy was a commodity to be sold so that they could feed their families. This does not make them bad people. I had just experienced a clash in that moment. And while usually I enjoy it when a cultural clash occurs, as it proves to be a tremendous learning experience, I found this one to be slightly uncomfortable.

After about ten minutes of holding the puppy he still hadn't stopped shivering completely, so I unzipped my sweatshirt and tucked him inside. He finally stopped shivering, tucked his nose into the crevice of my elbow, and fell fast asleep. I sat there for another ten minutes, rocking him like a baby and blubbering all over myself. I finally turned at looked up at the shopkeepers, and they smiled at me kindly. One of them picked up the puppy's cage and brought it inside. There was no heat in the shop and it was not significantly warmer than the outdoors, as it had no door, but at least it provided shelter from the wind.

The puppy was a little ball of warmth as I put him back in his cage. I then wandered around until I found a shop selling scarves. I bought a nice, warm scarf for him, brought it back to the shop, and wrapped him up in it. He had started shivering again, but when I set him back in his cage after wrapping him up he began biting at the scarf, playing with it, pouncing on it. The shopkeepers smiled again at me as I walked away--an expression that I was glad for because I was worried that I had offended them with this gesture, that I had caused them to lose face. And it's possible that I did--I'll never know. I do certainly hope not. In that moment, however, I was overpowered by my urge to keep the puppy warm.

I think about that puppy all the time now, and I hope that someone has fallen in love with him and taken him to a nice, warm house. I think about the inner clash that this created for me, and the realization that certain aspects of my cultural (and, hell, socioeconomic) lens are impossible to shed when interacting with another place, another culturally prescribed/socioeconomically dictated way of being, another lifestyle. And to be blinded by judgment and self-righteousness is a mistake. It is in these clashes that true learning happens, and the ground is primed for the growth of compassion and humility and understanding, even when it proves to be uncomfortable.