The Dog Cafe

So, I did a lot this weekend.   But the point that I would like to highlight with this blog post is what I did on Thursday with my friend.  The dog café.

                We didn’t have school on Thursday and Friday this week, due to incoming Freshmen orientation, so I went home with a friend to Seoul for a few days.  She knew that I loved dogs, and she likes dogs too, so we decided to go to this dog café in Myeongdong.  Basically what it is, is a mediocre café that serves you a drink, and you go and sit at a table, and around the room that is the café there are 20 dogs wandering around.  Some of them are cute, some are not, and at the beginning they show you the dog “menu” which has all the names, and they tell you which ones are dangerous to pet.  Why they have dogs that are dangerous to touch in a dog cafe, I will never understand. 

                Anyways, about 20 minutes after we got there, these two dogs start fighting. I know dogs, and I know when they are seriously fighting, and these dogs were getting at it.  They had to be pulled apart, but it was seriously chaotic because all the dogs were barking and going crazy.  It was normal though I guess, none of the staff seemed to care.

                This is where the dog lover in me comes out—this is absolutely not an okay establishment.  The dogs live 20 to one room that is about twice the size of my bedroom in the states, and they never get out.  They relieve themselves right there in the café, where it is not only not sanitary for the dogs, but also for the people who are enjoying their drinks only to find that a dog is peeing by their chair.

                The dogs don’t all get along; they fight with each other—making it dangerous for not only the dogs, but also the people in the café.   And all the dogs are fed in communal food/water bowls, which just gives them reason to fight.

                And also, the dogs get NO rest.  One of the dogs came up to me and I pet it, then it jumped up on my lap and slept for an hour.  They are constantly being harassed by the people in the café, who seem to not care at all (and don’t know how to pick up a dog—if you don’t know how to pick up a dog, don’t improvise).  That is one thing that I have to mention, is that Korean people have a completely different perspective on dogs than Americans do.  It is not uncommon to be walking down the street and see a dog chained to a fence on a chain that is like 3 feet long.  They just don’t care about dogs here.  So in reality, the lives that the dogs are getting at the dog café are better than the alternative lives that they could be having.  But both are sad.  I will upload pictures to my facebook--it is being really slow to upload them here.