From Vietnam: The fluffy, frisky and friendly puppy love

HANOI – Right now, our new puppy is sitting in a metal cage and whining. It’s not a small cage, and it’s actually sort of fancy, with a pan beneath the lower bars to catch puppy pee. She is whining, obviously, because she wants me to liberate her.

And maybe I will, eventually. But I’m not sure why, when I arrived home, she had been placed in the cage inside the living room and not left in the larger plastic enclosure we bought to keep the frisky little bitch from running all over the four-storey house and pooping and peeing wherever she pleases. Was this some sort of discipline from the nanny who also has three human children to worry about? Was this simply because the nanny had to step out and figured this was the best place to leave the pooch?

Some people would say we are tempting fate to acquire a dog in a country where many people enjoy thit cho (dog meat) and others walk around with menacing pitbulls. (All considered, if dogs must be on the menu, may I recommend the pitbull?) Then again, if you have three children who want a dog, and you have fond memories of your own growing up, and you notice that the Vietnamese are more and more prone to consider dogs as friends (not food), and you’d really like to see those thit cho eateries lose business…  well, it looks like the pros outweigh the cons.

Or do they?

Some time ago my wife took our two youngest kids “just to look” at a litter of cockapoos. These are a Cocker Spaniel, poodle mix that, in theory, would be easy on my wife’s allergies. A couple hours later they were home with our new puppy, whose name is Cinnamon if you ask our 11-year-old daughter or Lucy if you ask her 5-year-old brother.

She is darn cute – fluffy, frisky and friendly. She has a little stubby tail and when she wags it, she wags her whole butt. But the training phase is not my favorite time of canine companionship. Like most people in Hanoi, we have precious little outdoor space for our puppy. When I was growing up, we had an ample backyard. Instead of a cage, we’d let her roam around outdoors if we left the house.

OK, she’s getting really loud now. Do I reward her yips, whines, barks and howls? Or do I show her she can’t push me around? Should I get the little plastic clicker and try to train her to shut up?

One thing I’ve noticed: She seems to think the plastic enclosure in the living room is her toilet. And why wouldn’t she? We did get it to keep her from running all over the house. When she squats, we’re supposed to pick her up quickly and move her outdoors – but we’re always a little too late. So what she has learned, it seems, is that pooping and peeing in the enclosure will get her out.

OK, I’ve let her out. She seemed quite please for a few minutes, wagging her butt. But now she has started barking again. “WHAT?” I yelled. She calmed down and moved over to my feet. So maybe yelling is the trick – a way to let her now I’m the alpha dog here.

She is very quiet now. Perhaps she is content. But for all I know, as I tap away at my laptop, she is somewhere in this house marking her turf. The other day, I found a little organic gift on the stairs. Slipping on that would not have been fun. Cleaning it wasn’t fun – but I’ve changed plenty of human diapers, and by comparison, puppy poop really doesn’t stink.

I need to keep telling myself this is just a phase. She seems like a smart pooch – perhaps so smart she’s training us and not getting trained. In a few months, we’ll be able to take her out for walks along the lake, like other dog owners in the Tay Ho do.  If we bring along a pooper-scooper, perhaps we’ll start a fad and inspire others to clean up their dog’s mess. Why, perhaps our example will even help curb the plague of public urination by male homo sapiens.

In a few months we’ll be walking Cinnamon or Lucy or Lucinnamon around to our DoDo Café in its new location. Our friend Ngoc, a dog lover I’ve written about before, has plans to move her dog-friendly café from its old location on Dang Thai Mai to a spot on the lake road – right across from the grassy park near the lotus pond that becomes something of a dog park every weekend, something fairly common in many countries, but new to Vietnam.

Anyway, if you see a cute little cinnamon-colored pooch over there wagging her butt, feel free to say hi while the dogs sniff each other.