11/10/12|Submitted by Ben Bright

Tokyo's Story

My dog’s name is Tokyo Rose. We call her Tokyo or “Tok Tok”. My then girlfriend, now wife, got our dog from the Fulton County Animal Shelter during the summer of 2009. At the time, Tokyo was so tiny that they were keeping her with the kittens. The shelter said that she was a chow mix and that she would probably get to be about 60 or . I’m not too sure about her being a chow mix, and she is currently about .

After getting Tokyo, we got jobs teaching English in South Korea. We couldn’t leave her behind, so she came with us to South Korea. My girlfriend, Tokyo and I lived in a small one room apartment for a year. Tokyo slept in a cardboard box at the foot of the bed. It was cramped, but luckily Tokyo is a very lazy dog, and she spent the days sleeping on our bed. We would often take her out at night with us. The owners of the local foreigner bar loved her, and they were disappointed when we didn’t bring her with us. On weekends we often took her with us to a local island, where she happily ran on the beach. Many of the Koreans weren’t too sure about Tokyo. They usually only have very small dogs as pets, and dogs that are Tokyo’s size are usually kept either as guard dogs or as livestock, but our Korean friends who got to know her absolutely loved her, and they liked her name, because it sounds like the polite form of the word for rabbit in their language. When we returned to the United States, Tokyo came back with us. She is our world traveling dog.

I’ve always had dogs growing up, but they have all had pedigrees and were bought from breeders. I’ve had a collie, a border collie, and two cocker spaniels. They’ve all been good dogs, but Tokyo holds a special place in my heart for her loyalty, her kindness, and her obedience. For instance, I gave her a bath today, which she hates, but she jumped in the bathtub all by herself, even though she was pleading with her eyes for me not to make her do it, and after her bath, she happily played with me in the apartment. Tokyo is a great dog, and she came from the humble beginnings of a tiny, unknown breed, shelter puppy.