Here is the story of Happy the dog:
Happy is a shaggy, short-legged dog - a mongrel with a hint of collie. His coat is black and white with some grey and brown and it needs a lot of combing. He has a bad back foot but hobbles around quite fast. He is intelligent with a great sense of direction.
When he was a puppy he lived inside the MRT Danshui line between Zhongshan and Shuanglian when it was still a building site (10 years ago). I used to pass there and coax the puppy out by rustling a plastic bag (spells “food” to stray dogs). At some point the nearby dance studio where my girlfriend was working at the time started feeding him. He has a shaggy coat that mats easily and is prone to infestation by fleas. I used to take him home to comb and bathe him. When I was away from Taiwan he was hit by a scooter. Then it happened again. He ended up minus half of one of his rear feet. I took him home frequently and returned him to the dance studio on the way to work.
Then the dance studio was burned down by arsonists. The dance people who lived there moved to their other home on Yangmingshan and took Happy with them. Since then, the dance studio has been rebuilt with funding from the Taibei City Government, but there is never anyone there.
I can’t get a straight answer about where Happy is now. I have heard that he is being cared for on Yangmingshan by a Taiwanese woman and her foreign husband. So the point of this post is to find out whether the foreign fellow is someone here on Forumosa. I miss Happy a lot. If he is still alive, I would love to visit him!
Juba
