This next one is likely the mother of that pup, given they are the same breed of "Tuguo". Were I in her circumstances I think I'd look just as depressed, the poor thing...
Another pup, this one jet black like my first Taiwan dog. He can't be more than a month old or so...
And this might be his mother, obviously a little wary of me (though not too much - all of them approached me immediately without hesitation when I parked the bike over the ridge)...
And there was also this little fella, though it wasn't clear to me at the time who his parents were, or whether they are even still alive...
I fed them hot dogs and a pint of milk between them, but it wasn't nearly enough. I could have dropped a NT$500 note on food and milk for them and it might not have been enough. Already having six hungry mouths to feed back home, and being in the process of looking for a new house or apartment to rent, I didn't want to adopt them.
Having said that, seeing them there really was a crying shame. Dogs have souls too, and it tears me up inside to see this. To just throw them away into the wild like that - barely surviving on poisonous leftovers in the trash the mountain people throw away, and the odd act of kindness from strangers like me...
I will put out feelers to my Taiwanese friends to post these pictures on their FB pages and so on to try to find people to adopt them but I'm not hopeful. One of the reasons Taiwanese people often give for not wanting to adopt the Taiwanese "Tuguo" dogs is aggression. However, this is simply mistaken. The Tuguos kept as guard dogs are of course aggressive - but this is because they have been trained to be so and are treated as instruments to be discarded after a certain age. What those dogs need is the same thing other dogs need - love and attention and someone to look after them properly.
There is an immense and ineffable sense of pride to be felt in rescuing animals like this, nursing them back to health over a long period of time and watching them run around playing in the park.
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