The Dogs Of Sinjhuang

We're cat people, but we have a soft spot for dogs too. Sinjhuang is full of dogs- some of them are pets who live outside, but a lot of them are strays. I don't know who is sending their poor dogs to live on the street but it's not uncommon to see dogs with gashes in their fur or dogs with only three legs limping around town. One thing you never see is mean dogs. They all seem really tame and easy going and if we were staying in Taiwan forever we would try to adopt one of them. To survive on these streets the dogs have to be smart as well (to survive all the scooters!)- I've seen dogs look both ways before crossing the 6-lane road and they always wait for the walk signal light at the crosswalk. This post is a tribute to our favorite dogs in Sinjhuang.


This is Sweater Dog. We gave him that name because he's usually wearing a tight red sweater. He lives in the apartment building across the road from us and we like him a lot because he spends his days jumping at the scooters that drive by. He's on our side- he hates the scooters too!


At the end of our road there is a parking lot that we used to cut through to get to the bus stop. This dog (name: Guard Dog) lives there and usually he pays us no attention, but once he jumped at Nareesa (can't really blame him on that one) so we've stopped cutting through the parking lot. He's a little intense, but I don't think he's a bad dog- plus he's BFFs with a little black and white cat so we'll give him points for that. He used to share the parking lot with a dog that we called "Asian Dog" because he had a distinctly Asian-looking face but that dog has disappeared in recent weeks. I hope Guard Dog didn't have anything to do with his disappearance.


A lot of the stray dogs in town know that there's strength in numbers so you'll often see two or three of them traveling together. These two guys live on the sidewalk near our the Family Mart, which is a few minutes from our school. There used to be three of them that lived there, but now there's only two so we're not sure what happened to their friend. They are nice dogs but if you try to pet them or give them some food they get scared, so they obviously haven't had the best experiences with people in the past. Update: Melodie tells me that only the blonde dog has been around for the past few days- the darker dog has disappeared. She said the blonde guy looks lonely :(


This is Lucky. He's our neighbor's dog. He used to be a stray but they took him in off the street and he's been living on their roof ever since. Actually, they have taken in two other dogs as well- Happy and Shao Hong ("little yellow"). Shao Hong says hello to us from the roof everytime we get off the elevator or open our front door- he barks at every little noise. Lucky, who we actually see (and not just hear) is so cute! He dines in Christine's sisters apartment on the 4th floor so occasionally we will see Lucky walking by himself down the stairs from the roof to the 4th floor. He's a good boy who just wants to be pet all the time, and if you pet him the right way he will pee on you.