Abandoned Dog's 3-Year Wait for Owners Ends in Finding a New Home

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ENG 101H
December 2, 2012

ABANDONED DOG 'S 3-YEAR WAIT FOR OWNERS ENDS WITH NEW HOME

The story that I want to share today is regarding an abandoned dog that waited three years for his owners to return to their house. When moving to another town, Chen was left abandoned in the house. He wondered around the property for three years, waiting for them to come back, sleeping in the carport and scavenging food scraps from a nearby grocery store.
After years of waiting, a neighbor told Lisa Rendstrom from Chap’s Chow Rescue Foundation what was happening to Chen. She came to the site and bit by bit gained the dog’s trust and affection. She took him the their shelter where she started searching for a new owner to adopt the wonderful animal. It didn’t take long, because Ben Rupp saw his photo online, immediately felt a connection between them and flew to Georgia to take him. Chen is happy now, having a new home in Ohio, with an owner who fell in love with him the moment he saw him.
This story reminds me of a movie that is one of the most emotional movie that I have even seen : “Hachi, a dog tale”. Based on a true story from Japan, Richard Gere stars this great movie as a college professor who finds an abandoned dog and takes the poor lost animal in. The film follows the two as the man and animal soon form a strong and unexplainable bond. Every morning, the dog used to walk his owner to the train station and expect for him to arrive back from work, in the afternoon. But when, one day, the owner doesn’t arrive, having suffered a heart-attack and died at work, the dog keeps waiting in the train station for him. Days pass and the animal would not leave, even though his owner’s family put efforts in getting him home. The dog kept returning in the morning and in the afternoon, waiting for the train to arrive and his owner. After nine years of waiting in the same place, he dies in the train station. Hachi is a film about loyalty and the rare, invincible bonds that occasionally form almost instantaneously in the most unlikely places.
Although most people are aware that there are more dogs and cats being born than there are people willing to adopt them, the actual number of unwanted dogs and cats is staggering. About 62 percent of all households in the United States have a pet and about 78.2 million dogs and about 86.4 million cats are owned in the United States. (ASPCA.org) Approximately 5 million to 7 million companion animals enter animal shelters nationwide every year, and approximately 3 million to 4 million are euthanized (60 percent of dogs and 70 percent of cats). (AnimalWorldNetwork.com)
The connection that forms between a human and his pet animal cannot be described in words. But the question remains: Do our dogs feel the same things that we feel?
In “The Botany of Desire,” author Michael Pollan observes that there are tens of millions of dogs in North America and only ten thousand wolves. He asks, “So what does the dog know about getting along in this world that its wild ancestor doesn’t?” The best explanation for everything canine, from the evolution of the wolf to the domestication of the dog — to the incredible emotional relationship that has emerged between the modern pet and its owner — is that dogs feel what we feel.
Dogs have long been considered "man 's best friend," and they have certainly earned the title. The bond between humans and canines is unmistakable. Since the domestication of the dog, people have been drawn to them (and they to us). Dogs have helped us in so many ways and expect little in return. They have hunted with us, kept vermin and pests away, served the military and police, assisted the disabled, and faithfully remained our loyal companions. In turn, we care for them and maintain good quality of life. This is more than a fair trade.
The bond you have with your dog begins the moment he comes into your life and never stops growing. And the two materials presented above prove that this is a “till death do us part” bond!

The link to the web-material is: http://www.mnn.com/family/pets/stories/abandoned-dogs-3-year-wait-for-owners-ends-with-new-home Works Cited
AnimalWorldNetwork.com. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.animalworldnetwork.com/bsurpetstat.html
ASPCA.org. (n.d.). Retrieved December 2, 2012, from www.apsca.org

Cited: AnimalWorldNetwork.com. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.animalworldnetwork.com/bsurpetstat.html ASPCA.org. (n.d.). Retrieved December 2, 2012, from www.apsca.org