My grandmother used to raise a female dog since before the genocide and the civil war happened in Cambodia. It was almost half a century ago.
Once the dog had puppies for a couple of week, there was a relative of my grandmother came from another district to visit her. He saw the puppies, so he asked her for one of these. Those puppies were still in a breastfeeding.
While one of the puppies was given away, the female dog always lost from my grandmother's house at night and then come back in the morning. No one in the house had known why the dog went out at night and come back in the morning, it looked so so tired and still give the breastfeeding to her puppies.
After a few week, the same relative came to visit my grandmother again, to tell her that the female dog actually ran to do the breastfeeding for the given puppy. His house is about 10km from my grandmother's house, so the dog did 20km a day to feed her puppies. She might follow my grandmother's relative to his house, it is why she could know where is the house.
The story becomes a moral teaching that I heard it from my grandmother once, from my dad a few times, and also from my relatives a few times. I think that not that many people remember about their pet that long, of more than 50 years; but the female dog took a space of our memory. The story spread to our next generation as well.
Human said that we are special, because we know right and wrong; but we are not the only spices that have feeling. The animals are also having the feeling. I do really appreciate when I see the photos of people rescue animals and their pet when there are natural disaster or some difficult phenomenons. Pets are depended on us, so if we face a disaster and we abandon them, it will be the end of their life.
