Out of being bored during the last weekend, I'd decided to do some housekeeping. There is this spare room in my flat that has served as a store room all this while and there are boxes and boxes of stuffs in there, some of which must have been unopened for more than a decade or so. I've always wanted to clear out some of those things that are of no use to me anymore and so I started off by checking out a few boxes that were labeled “doggy stuffs”. They were mostly dog grooming tools, piles of pedigree certificates, photos of dogs I'd owned in the past and etc, going back to those days a long time ago, when I was breeding and showing dogs. Going through the contents of these boxes had brought back some memories, of things that had happened in the past. Among those that I'll surely remember for a long time to come, was this unexpected phone call that I'd received not so long ago.
This happened about a couple of years back. A gentleman had called and as soon as he'd established that I was the person he was looking for, in a very serious tone, he'd started off by saying, “Mr. Low, I have gone to great lengths to find out your phone number. You see, I have to tell you that my wife is in distress and I think you are the person I should be talking to."
I can tell you now, that the Chinese saying, "If you have done no wrong, you will not be alarmed by the knock on the door at midnight" is not always true. For at that moment when I heard what was being said and in that kind of a tone, I was actually more than being alarmed, even though a decent man like me has got no reason to be so.
As it turned out, it had nothing to do with that sort of a misunderstanding that I'd at first feared it was, much to my relief (phew!). What had actually happened did have something to do with my past though.
It seemed that the lady who was very attached to her pet dog of 15 years was very distressed when it had passed away a few months back. That dog was bred by me. I was told that she'd adored the dog so very much, for its breed temperament, its intelligence and its loyalty. The passing of her constant and loyal companion, which in her own words, she'd loved like her own child, was difficult for the lady to come to terms with.
When she was finally convinced by the husband to get a replacement of the same breed, she'd wished that it could be from the same breeder so that she can be more assured of having one that could also have the same character and temperament, hence the phone call. I was told that they had been through a lot of trouble during the months that followed, trying to get in touch with me because my phone number and address were not the same anymore as the information that was given behind the pedigree paper.
Unfortunately, I'd stopped breeding dogs since a long time ago and that dog was one of the last few that I'd bred. Being already very out of touch with the dog breeding community, I was also not able to help very much. As sad as I was for being unable to help, it was also one of those rare moments that had brought me great satisfaction from whatever little that I'd achieved in the past.
Here are a few pictures of some stuffs from the boxes I'd cleared out during the weekend. I thought they would add some color to the post.
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