My dear dog, Prince

By Aiping Zhang

My daughter Dory had been begging for a dog for years, but my husband and I never thought it was a good idea. We were too busy finding our footing in this new country. 

He studied for almost a year to become a licensed real estate agent in Toronto. He then found that many of the Chinese people we knew here held real estate agent licences, yet had closed only a few deals over the years. Many of them also held several other licences and certificates for accounting, programming, home inspection, insurance agent, mortgage agent, etc. We were among the unique group of people who were so good at textbook learning and passing the exams, whether or not it was useful in the real world. 

He searched many sites for opening a restaurant, but couldn’t decide to go into the business.

He tried many other things and finally joined an auto repair franchise, taking out a large loan. It seemed like a hard but good start. I had expected him to find a job or do something less risky. But from the bottom of my heart, I knew I should support him in pursuing his dream of starting his own business, no matter how small it was or how much it cost, even though a few Chinese friends had already warned us that it was so difficult to make a small business profitable here in Canada. They had come here years earlier than we had, but still took a cautious wait-and-see attitude. “Canada is a country of capitalism, no matter how peaceful and pretty it looks, you never know where the invisible hand of capitalism will come from and grab everything you own.” Their advice came from the life experiences of friends of their friends’ friends. But my husband had already made a plan. He showed me the numbers, charts, and tables he had drawn, “as long as we could have this much business each day and this much each month to cover the rent and maintain a gross profit margin above this number, we should be fine.” He had already done on-site investigations, spending months recording and roughly calculating the average customer flow of several auto shops from outside their stores. “Don’t worry,” he reassured me.

I was a scientist working at a research lab. Unlike me, who was always excited to tell him almost everything I saw and felt, my husband was not always talkative. If he simply told me, “Everything is good”, after a long day of work, I knew it was not “that good”, and what I should do was “not to ask any further questions”, but to prepare a better meal for that day. And if he was in a good mood, talking about his customers and co-workers, I knew that he had already achieved his daily goal and that everything was indeed good. 

When Dory claimed again that she really, really deserved a dog because she had earned many “As” and two awards, “work hard” and “make a difference,” at her elementary school, my husband eventually agreed that we would consider getting a dog for her, maybe as her upcoming birthday present, but not as a promise.

It was a very nice day in late September. We were on our way to see a dog in Port Burwell. Dory was very happy and kept singing all the way to the dog farm. 

“We will just go and see. Most likely, we will not buy the dog,” my husband tried to reassure me and warn Dory once more.

I never thought we would buy a dog that day. I was still against the idea of having a dog. I had planned that trip as a country sightseeing tour, stopping here and there, looking around, eating snacks, and taking pictures.

 When we were inside the farmhouse and were introduced to a group of beagle dogs, I realized we shouldn’t have come at all!

Dory loved all of them immediately! So did my husband and I.

It was very hard to turn away from them when surrounded by those lovely doggies with their fluffy, long ears, bright eyes, and instant affection for us.

 All my warm childhood memories of running wildly among the mountains with my dogs and friends came rushing back. It was overwhelming! My eyes misted with tears.

 “Mom, Mom, can we have both of them?” Two doggies jumped up and down on her lap and tried to lick her.

I never had a dog or even came close to touching one after I left my hometown for the city. I didn’t have time for that. Besides the money and energy spent, I find it kind of inhumane to keep a dog in the city.

 The owner began to share more details about those dogs, including age, breed, family history, behaviour, and personality…

“This one is a little shy. He was scared by the motorcycle’s roar this morning and hid under the sofa for a while. That one is very curious and brave…”

A dog should protect us from possible attacks by coyotes or raccoons, or from robbery or break-ins. A shy dog definitely should not be our choice. 

 Wait!

When I saw my husband start to look through the dog page by page, comparing them one by one, seriously, and refusing to put them down, I whispered to him, “We just came to see, right? We haven’t done any research yet. How much do you know about the different dogs in Canada? You can’t buy the first house you see on the market.”

 “Well, I have been driving for two hours to get here. Look at them. So adorable. Why bother going anywhere else?” He was very excited.

“Do you have experience raising a dog?” the owner asked us suspiciously.

“We all grew up in farm villages with dogs,” my husband answered proudly.

“Do you have a cage at home? That dog is only ten months old and should be kept in a cage for a while until it is well-trained. Otherwise, he will bite and chew everything.”

We looked at each other, stunned, and never thought of keeping the doggie in the cage. Our dogs all lived freely in the yard back in our hometown. I thought dogs in Western countries lived inside the house as freely as their own kids.

The owner patiently gave us a detailed lecture with written notes on everything we should know and prepare for immediately.

 “What would you call his name?” he asked.

“Prince, I would call him Prince,” Dory answered at once.

“The dog has a microchip implanted under the skin, and all the information is now linked to you. If he gets lost, the chip will trace him back to you.”

Wow!

My husband paid the owner, and they all followed Prince outside to play in the grass and get to know each other.

“Remember to call the vet and get Prince’s third vaccine. Until then, it’s not safe for him to stay outside any longer. Don’t feed him anything other than dog food,” Prince’s former owner reminded us before we left.

 I felt I knew so little about dogs!

On our way home, Dory held Prince in her arms and showed him the views from both sides of the car. “Mom, Prince is learning. He is as curious as I am.”

Prince has large, dark brown eyes. Looking into them, I could tell Prince is a very active and smart dog.

Prince finally fell asleep on her lap. Dory asked me to take photos and post them right away.

Two of her friends’ parents responded quickly. They wanted to come and see Prince! “Let us know when you are back home,” they asked. “We will be there ASAP.”

 On our way home, we hurried to PetSmart and bought the cage, chew toys, leash, and other necessary supplies.

By then, plus the money paid to his previous owner, a total of $600 had been spent.

OMG!

After we were back home, all the kids were overjoyed with Prince. Their parents looked at us in disbelief. “Very brave, you guys are very brave.”

None of our Chinese friends had a dog here. We were all first-generation immigrants. Owning a dog didn’t align with our pragmatic futurist philosophy. We don’t live just for the present. The house we tightened our budget to afford is expected to double in price over the next ten to twenty years. The kids we spend most of our savings on for their extracurricular activities are expected to excel at school and become extraordinary people in the next 10 to 40 years. A dog is as luxurious as a Burberry bag, which you would only have for this season or for a couple of years, and is better suited to richer people.

 We once laughed together about the funny idea of raising a dog here: “If you have all the energy and money, why not have another child instead of a dog?”

When I saw local people walking their dogs here, I felt so jealous. Even so, instead of wanting a dog like theirs, I’d rather skip the dog and go straight for a casual, relaxed outlook like theirs: walking slowly and leisurely in loose sportswear, looking like they have tons of time, with no need to rush. Isn’t leisure time a luxury?

Maybe we were just too eager to embrace that kind of stereotype.

On that day, to my family, a dog was no longer just a dog. Somehow, it became a milestone marking the end of the uncertainties in our stressful immigration journey and a symbol of becoming a real, relaxed Canadian.

 So, here came Prince.

When you are too eager to have something, you are unlikely to make the right decision.

Even though we all knew that raising a dog here could be much more expensive than in our hometown, I didn’t expect Prince to need this much attention.

Compared to our half-wild, half-domestic dogs in our village, which were more like the dog Buck from The Call of the Wild and could live on their own most of the time, Prince was more like a germ-free mouse from a sterile lab.

On the first night, my husband and I hurried to assemble Prince’s cage. Dory went up and down the stairs, showing Prince each room. Prince found a dirty sock, picked it up, and ran around the house with his short, strong legs. Dory chased after him, trying to stop him.

Wow, look at them! Good exercise! Didn’t even need to go outside. Dory was such a lonely child in the family. She should have had this companion sooner.

 When I found out, Prince had already left marks on the washroom, the hardwood floor, and the carpet. He peed everywhere.

“Let’s put him in the cage.”

Prince refused to enter. When I pushed him inside and locked the cage, he was very angry, kept patting the cage with his paw, and barked fiercely.

“Mom, Prince is just a little puppy. You can’t treat him like this.”

Dory sat beside him, petting him and reading a book to him.

“Mom, leave the light on. He may be afraid of the dark.”

Prince finally calmed down, lying inside the cage.

What a long day!

It was in the middle of the night when the whining from Prince downstairs, through the closed bedroom door, woke me up.

Do all species of cub make the same high-pitched sound as a crying baby?

I bounced up, walked Prince on the deck of the backyard for a while, petting him a lot, then put him back, yawning.

“Be good. Mommy loves you.”

The next time I was woken by his whine, it was almost six. I put the collar and leash on him and tied him to the fence. The leash was long enough for him to move freely around the deck.

 “Good boy, stay here. Go pee. Mommy needs to cook.”

A few minutes later, I heard him scratching and pawing at the glass door. He broke free from his leash.

He looked at me, unhappy, like a neglected child: come out and stay with me!

I pushed my husband off the bed.

“Choose, watch the dog, or make breakfast and lunch.”

My husband promised he would come back at lunchtime to feed Prince. He then gobbled his breakfast and hurried out for work.

Dory and I stayed with Prince in our backyard for as long as we could before we had to leave home.

It was a nice morning.

That day after work, the moment I opened the door, Prince jumped onto me.

W-h-a-t happened—

A pungent smell surged out, almost making me vomit.

What a mess!

Prince managed to break out of his cage. There was dog poop all around his cage and pee everywhere outside.

Tissue paper, toys, books, and clothes were dragged everywhere, all dirty and broken.

Dory cried out, “Mommy, why didn’t we take the shy dog?”

It turned out that my husband didn’t come home for lunch. No wonder Prince became so mad!

My husband explained that he had no customers in the morning. But right before noon, three customers came in almost at the same time. He was so pleased that he totally forgot Prince.

I couldn’t blame him; he had also forgotten to eat his own lunch. His auto shop had just opened, and he needed at least three customers a day to cover the rent. In this small city of 190,000 people, there were at least forty auto shops. We couldn’t afford to lose any business.

That night, after washing up all the mess Prince had made, I didn’t have any appetite for dinner.  

Prince sat beside me, watching me while I did the washing. I pointed at him. “Don’t do this again! Remember!” 

The next day, I brought Prince in for the vaccine. The veterinarian was very young. “Such a lovely dog! Looks so healthy.” She checked Prince’s poop, ears, and fur, and recommended medications for an ear infection and worms, as well as nasal drops to prevent airborne germs. By the end of the exam, one hundred and fifty dollars had been spent.

“When are you planning to do the ……surgery for him?” she said, using words I didn’t understand. “……you know, the surgery to make him infertile…”

“Oh, I am not going to do that for him,” I said. None of our previous dogs in our village had ever had that surgery; they were all free to go out and mate. Sometimes our dog came home pregnant and then gave birth to six to eight puppies, each with fur patterns completely different from the others. We often teased those puppies by guessing which dogs in the village were the fathers. Wasn’t that the basic need of life for a dog? 

“Just thinking about it, if you are going to do it, the best time for him is within the next two months. Without the surgery, he could become very aggressive and may attack people.”

Prince looked like a nice dog, but if he escaped from home and attacked anyone in self-defence, I was sure the full responsibility would be traced back to us through the microchip implanted in his skin.

“Can I ask how much it will cost?” “About eight hundred.”

Back home, I complained to my husband, “Kill me! How long has it been since I had a haircut for $10!”

“Mom, can I feed Prince some rice?”

The rice was just out of the steaming pot and had been sterilized… should be safe… “No, we don’t know if Prince will be allergic to rice… Let’s stick to dog food.” Our old dogs in the village ate whatever we humans cooked and never got sick. But Prince was different, so delicate, and we couldn’t afford extra vet visits.

I became a new mom again. Every three hours in the evening, I woke up to check on Prince. I stayed in our backyard as late as possible, running around with Prince as much as I could, hoping he would tire himself out and sleep through the night, the method I used for Dory when she was a baby. Sometimes I got tired from running and sat on the deck. Prince climbed into my lap and lay there like a little baby. It got colder, so I held him inside my coat. The feeling was strange. I hoped he wouldn’t grow up that fast.

Prince was such a smart dog. Within three days, he learned to hold himself until we came to take him outside. He didn’t break out or mess up his cage again.

Each day, when I came home and opened his door, Prince stretched his body and came out of his cage to greet me. I felt it was so cruel to keep him alone at home. Even if he could learn to live outside his cage soon, wasn’t the house just a bigger cage for him?

A week after his vaccination, we brought Prince to the Royal Botanical Garden in Burlington.

So proud. We have a dog now! Dory had been longing for this moment for so long; she smiled like a blooming rose. Even Prince seemed hyper excited. He had been confined to his cage and our tiny backyard for so long; he couldn’t wait either. 

I had the feeling that people passing by smiled at us more often than usual and nodded politely. Some even stopped to pet Prince, saying, “Such a lovely dog!” Then they asked Dory our dog’s name, age, and other small questions. See? Our dog indeed improved our social interactions.

Why were other people’s dogs so tame? They were simply following their owners at a slow pace, while Prince ran forward so energetically that we three had to take turns holding the leash and running behind him.

“Stop! Prince! Stop running!” Prince sometimes stopped, but soon found something ahead that attracted him, then ran on again. We soon were out of breath.

“We were so lacking in exercise!” My husband and I looked at each other. “We should do this more often.”  

For almost half of our walking that day, we were afraid of either losing him in the woods or of our own breath, so we two took turns, holding Prince tightly to our chests, like a little baby. 

When I described our dramatic dog-walking routine to my colleague, he told me, “A beagle is not a good choice for a pet. It’s too active and very stubborn. If you do not want to walk a dog that much, you’d better choose an indoor dog. This kind of dog likes staying inside and doesn’t need to be walked that much.”

I looked at the picture he showed me online. No, I didn’t need an indoor dog like that. Just looking at the dog made me sad. I loved an active dog like Prince.

“Or you can find a dog school to train your dog to be more obedient,” he suggested.

The dog school I contacted told me they only had spots available on Thursday from 2 to 4 pm or early Saturday morning. 

We wouldn’t skip our work or Dory’s Chinese class on Saturday to train the dog. We decided to train Prince ourselves.

Dory offered to run with Prince in the morning. “Stay inside the backyard, Dory! Make sure you see him poop, and check the colour to see if it is a healthy brown,” I told her.

One day, we came home, and Prince was gone.

My husband explained that at lunchtime, he let Prince out to the backyard. No matter how much he begged Prince to poop, Prince didn’t, so he left Prince alone in the backyard and went back to work, thinking he would be back within an hour. Again, he had new customers coming, so he had to choose his customers over Prince.

We all went out to look for Prince and told each other, “Don’t worry too much. Prince has a microchip, remember?” 

After searching the nearby woods and trails for a while, we were back home, frustrated. A lovely girl from our neighbourhood sent Prince back, saying, “Your dog ran into our backyard.” It turned out Prince had heard her dog barking and squeezed out under our fence to make his own friend. Such a lonely dog!

One night, my husband told me, “I made a mistake bringing Prince home. We are not ready for this.” It was unusual for him to admit his mistake. He said, “I see how much you love Prince, but we have to give Prince away. How long have we not been getting good sleep, or even caring about Dory’s studies? I couldn’t go back often to check on Prince at noon. If we were retired or in better circumstances, we would definitely keep Prince.” Even though I tried to handle most of Prince’s care, I had no idea when Prince would grow into a dog like Buck. I saw that my husband had lost so much weight in the three months since opening his auto shop. 

He said he had already contacted a couple online. They wanted a dog, had extensive experience with pet dogs, were newly married, had no plans to have a child yet, and were living with their retired parents. It seemed they could be more devoted to Prince than we could be. “They will come this Saturday to see Prince. I will decide by then whether they are very nice people,” he said.

That Saturday night, when Dory and I returned from her reading club, she ran to find Prince. She couldn’t believe he was gone. Everything, the cage, the basket, the toys, and all the things we had bought for him, had been given away. “I will never forgive you!” she cried, again and again. We had to hold her tight and take turns explaining to her why we couldn’t keep Prince.

How reckless were we to decide to own Prince in the first place? So sorry, Prince. So sorry, Dory! One hundred apologies. 

The couple occasionally sent us pictures of Prince. I saw him still sleeping in the cage, the door wide open. It was up to Prince to decide whether to stay inside. Their parents often took Prince out for a walk. He seemed to have a better life there. Would he miss me? He had only stayed with us for a few weeks. He had most likely already forgotten me and moved on. Please don’t hate me, Prince!

“Where is the dog?” 

A couple of days later, when Dory and I walked around our house, we ran into our neighbour, Caro. He skipped our usual greeting, “How are you?” and asked us directly about our dog. Our backyards faced each other. He had probably witnessed our early-morning and late-night training sessions, as well as our recent dramatic runs. I explained that we didn’t have the energy or time to raise Prince, so we decided to give him away. He told us, “A beagle is a hunting dog, very sensitive and needs to explore outside, not a pet dog choice.” Why does everyone here know dog breeds? I wondered. My knowledge of dogs was limited to our village dogs. Most of them, unleashed, seemed mild-tempered, maybe mutt dogs. I was not afraid of those dogs wandering alone on our village streets. When I passed them, they didn’t even bother to look at me. Occasionally, dogs disappeared from the village. My mom said they were stolen by evil outsiders. Nevertheless, we always left the dog gate open so our dog could go in and out of the yard freely. 

Probably, that was the dog I vaguely expected to own, living in the backyard, had his own life, like a real village dog.

Aiping Zhang is a dedicated scientist with a passion for writing. With a PhD in molecular biology, she spent most of her career in research.

She is a new author with two ebooks, *Mom’s Hometown* and *The Missing Pieces of My Jigsaw Puzzle* (Amazon KDP). Her writing primarily focuses on immigration narratives and research, spanning both fiction and non-fiction.

She currently lives in Massachusetts with her family.