Dog Meat

People have different customs and habits all around the world. That is a fact. However, when you tend to keep up a custom or a habit in another country it can be a bit awkward.

I live in a part of the city that is known as Chinatown. I simply love it because of all the Asian culture. Although I do not live in the heart of Chinatown, where you can find typical Japanese architecture, cuisine, shops and many Asians, I do live in a building that is filled with Koreans, Chinese, Japanese and  other nationalities too that are Western.

I am going to tell you a story that happened in my building a few years ago. There are 25 floors in my building, four apartments per floor, which boils down to at least 100 families, resulting in a lot of people. It is very hard to know all the dwellers in the building. 

One morning I left for work at the usual time and notice a strong smell coming down the emergency stairway where all the garbage cans were kept. Each floor had its garbage can and the garbage was removed every afternoon. The smell was horrible, but I really didn´t give it too much thought.

When I got home, I ran into my next door neighbor who asked me whether I had noticed the strong smell in the hallway that morning. I answered that I had and she told me that they had found the carcass of a dog in one of the garbage cans on the 19^th floor. I was appalled. “When your pet dies you should bury it and not simply through it in the garbage can”, I told my neighbor. She corrected me and said that all that was found were the skin and bones and that whoever disposed of it didn´t even bother to tie it up in another plastic bag and simply threw it in the garbage can.

To me as an animal lover, this was a disgusting idea and I thought that the building superintendent should have called the animal protection officers. However, if I look at it through the cultural aspect one of the Chinese or Koreans must have prepared dog meat for dinner the night before and to them this is not out of this world.

It is hard for us to understand why some people do what they do. Tradition and upbringing is different in each country. Mind you, I think that the worse thing in this story is that there are no Asians on the 19^th floor, which means that whoever had dog burgers for dinner didn´t even have the decency to throw away the carcass in the garbage can on their own floor.

Now every time I smell a stench in the social hallway, I always think: poor doggy.

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(Written March 1, 2013)
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