Puppy Love (standard:Creative non-fiction, 6106 words)
Author: Mookoo Liang	Added: Feb 17 2006	Views/Reads: 4036/2510	Story vote: 0.00 (0 votes)
Can a puppy love a puppy and have his so-called "puppy love"? Read this story, and you'll learn something.

Puppy Love 

by Mookoo Liang 

======== 1 ======== 

Our son kept asking for a pet dog. I had turned down his proposal many
times, but he had turned to his mother and begged over and over again. 

"Mommy, my classmate Wang Kun has a puppy." He raised the issue the
other evening, "A white dog, you know, so small and cute! Wang Kun lets 
me play with it sometimes, but I really want to have one." 

"There, Tony, you are a good boy. You know what papa has said. He has
told you that . . ." 

"But why did Wang Kun's papa buy him a puppy? Not only Wang Kun, but
Zhang Xiulan also has a pet dog. And Lin Yong has one too." Tony was 
angry. The nine-year-old boy seemed to be less docile than before. 

"Well, the situations might be different," said my wife with patience.
"Papa is right. We are living in such a neighborhood. If we had a dog . 
. . Well, I don't know, maybe you should go and discuss the problem 
with your father tonight." 

My wife Jean hesitated at times, especially when our son asked for
something to play with. She said to me in private that we should give 
our little boy a few more toys, because he was our only child. As you 
can imagine, we had bought him lots of toys: colorful Lego blocks, 
stylish model cars, model ships, model planes, and the fancy robots 
Space Fighter and Wudi Tiejin'gang. 

Once we bought him a set of Barbie dolls. We were pleased to see our
"naughty boy" play with the girl dolls. When he dressed them, he acted 
as if he were taking care of real babies. Jean and I smiled at each 
other. We agreed that our boy would become a gentle, kind-hearted man 
someday. 

But our boy played with the Barbie dolls no more. He didn't even care
about his other expensive toys. He wanted a pet dog now. 

This caused a lot of trouble for his mother, my wife. Unlike me, Jean
was very afraid of dogs. She thought all kinds of dogs were wild 
animals and that all wild animals would possibly bite you when 
irritated. She once said to me, "You don't know when it would be 
irritated, do you?" 

"Oh, that's not very true." I shared with her my pleasant experience of
raising dogs. And I added, "Once a dog becomes a member of this family, 
it will remain friendly and faithful to you and me, not to mention our 
boy." 

Our little boy was only nine. And a pre-teenage boy is more or less like
a puppy himself. Just as the English word "kid" (originally referring 
to a young goat) is used to mean "a child," many Chinese parents refer 
to their sons as "xiao quan," literally meaning "small dog." 

So I was sure that if we had given our little Tony a puppy, he and the
animal would have become the best companions in the world. And he might 
have shown it to Wang Kun, to Zhang Xiulan, to Lin Yong, and to other 
classmates that possessed the similar pets. 

But I refused to allow him a pet dog. A pet dog would certainly bring
great fun to my little boy, and I myself had liked dogs very much when 
I was young; however, I was strongly against the idea of having such an 
animal in our present home. 

I rejected Tony's suggestion for three reasons. First, as we were living
in a quiet neighborhood, a barking animal would make too much noise. 
Second, young children living near us often came and played in front of 
our house. "If we let our dog run loose," I asked my son on purpose, 
"can we be sure that it won't hurt any of them? Do we have to confine 
our puppy by tying it up? Or by putting it in the cage most of the 
time?" 



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