“That’s their bonding time,” Kelvin See explained. “Ten to 15 minutes, every night.”
Like the shade of her coat, the dog’s name is Ginger, though that wasn’t always the case. She is calm, affectionate, and quietly observant – the kind of dog who rarely barks and prefers to watch the world before stepping into it.
Yet, sometimes, when she spots a certain kind of stranger on their walks, she freezes, or runs. As if her body remembers something her mind would rather forget. Because before she found her way to See and his family, Ginger had previously been adopted – and hurt.
See recalled that they had just moved into a new home two years ago and had thought it would be nice to get a dog. So he scrolled through Facebook, looking at rescues.
At first, another dog caught his eye – but a rescuer told him: “I think this one suits your family.”
That dog – who had been found abandoned at a skate park in Petaling Jaya – was named Avil then. Later, she was adopted by a mechanic in Ipoh. It was meant to be her happy ending. But it wasn’t.
“After a month or two, the rescuer went to check on her,” See said. “That’s when she found out the living conditions weren’t good. She was abused. She wasn’t fed properly. They were feeding her chicken bones!”
Chicken bones, dangerous even for adult dogs, are especially deadly for puppies.
The rescuer drove all the way to Ipoh to bring her back. By the time Avril arrived for her first meet-and-greet with the Sees, she was playful but very cautious.
“Even today, you can see it. If she sees someone who reminds her of her past, she will run away,” See noted.
They renamed her Ginger – partly because “Avril was hard to pronounce”, See quipped – but mostly because it felt right.
“She has a warm personality. Very warm. And when we called her Ginger, she responded.”
At home, Ginger slowly came into herself. At first, she dug holes in the garden, destroyed plants, and proudly presented pebbles as trophies.
“We’d wake up and the whole garden would be full of holes!” See exclaimed. “Then she’d proudly show us her ‘prize’.”
But she grew out of it. Now, she has her own outdoor space and her own bed with a cushion. She prefers the cool garden to the indoors.
Sometimes, when See is working, she creeps over and sits nearby, wanting to be closer to him.
“The moment she sees us, she makes sure we know she’s there,” he said. “She simply wants affection.”
What See didn’t expect was how Ginger would bring people together. On walks, the pooch is a magnet. “She manages to attract a lot of our neighbours. It’s probably her aura,” he said.
Thanks to this sweet rescue pup, See has forged friendships with fellow residents in his neighbourhood.
As for Jaden – an only child – Ginger is more than a friend: he’s a member of the family. “He’s a comfort dog and whenever I come back from school, I always play with her,” Jaden shared.
Such is the quiet miracle of Ginger: once abandoned and failed by humans, today she loves again, knowing that when morning comes, her humans are not going anywhere.
This article was written by Dinesh Kumar Maganathan @ FMT Lifestyle. Read more pet stories here.
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