Graceful Libby

Hi Jason-san

Libby-chan left Japan as scheduled. She is so cute dog. We let her drink some of the water before just before giving to CX also filled some water to the dish. She was shaking when I put onto the car but by the time we arrived NRT she was fine. At the quarantine inspection she was just walking around the room and looking for way to go out. After the inspections when I said 'HOUSE' she just went into the cage by herself.

Thank you very much for using our service and I hope you will enjoy HKG life with Libby-chan.

Best Regards
Kotaro Kino

We received the above email from our pet-mover in Japan. That same night, Libby arrived in our serviced apartment in Hong Kong. A little dazed and dehydrated but otherwise healthy, she gave the apartment a quick sniff and proceeded to drink all the water in the dish. Perhaps still in shock, she didn’t seem too happy to see us, but now, a week later, she’s fully adjusted to her new life in yet another crazy, busy, fast-paced Asian city.

From time to time, we still think back on the day almost eight years ago when we brought Libby home. She was so tiny that I used to take her outside holding her in my palm. Her nose would be at the tip of my fingertips and her little bum would just reach my wrist. When she was little, she looked remarkably like a German Shepherd puppy. As she grew up, however, her unmistaken identity of a Singaporean drain dog became apparent. In a nation where some so-called “dog lovers” hold a piece of pedigree paper to greater importance than the dog itself, poor Libby was unjustly ignored and discriminated against. We had another dog at the time, a handsome rambunctious beagle that demanded everyone’s attention wherever we went. Libby lived under his shadow quietly but gracefully, always the more obedient and better-behaved one.

When we moved to Tokyo, not only did she have to adjust to a drastically different climate, she also had to deal with a city that has much less green. She quickly changed her toilet habit and went from only going on grass to making do with dirt patches. As the temperature dropped, she slowly grew a thick coat of soft fluffy fur. My little scrawny dog was starting to look like an exotic beauty. Unfamiliar with her looks, many Japanese asked me what breed she was. Despite the fact that she was a mongrel through and through, they embraced her uniqueness all the same. That’s what I call true dog lovers.

This time around, what does Hong Kong have in store for us, I’m anxious to find out. I wasn’t sure how Libby would react to the small cramped space of our serviced apartment. Having lived most of her life in a place with an open garden, I also worried about her toilet schedule. Now a week later, all my worries have vanished. It took us a day or two, but Libby and I found a quiet street in the middle of SoHo (I later discovered that it was a prison on the other side of the tall wall) where she can do her business in peace. She’s even gotten used to going on concrete too. It just means that her human has to carry a bottle of water to wash it off. But hey, if Libby can adapt to such drastic changes without complaint, what’s toting a bottle of water around every time we go out?