Dogs on Motorcycle

The most interesting thing I have seen so far is dogs riding on motorcycles. Both cases involved dogs sitting on the footstep area of the motorcycle. The first case was a big dog riding on a moving motorcycle. His legs were dangling down, almost touching the ground as the motorcycle moved. It is difficult to hold a camera all the time to capture candid shots as I see them. His cute puppy eyes looked forward... The second case was a smaller dog who just got onto its sitting area, ready for take-off. With a smaller body, it was trying to stand steadily on the footstep area. I wonder if it learned how to stand without holding onto any bar like bus and train riders in Taipei. Too bad I can't be holding my camera all the time to capture these dog motocycle riders.

Perhaps there were just as many dogs as pets when I was a little child in Taiwan, but the types of dogs have changed. I see more small dogs than big ones around Taipei. People walk their dogs. Some dogs are dressed up in T-shirts. I see many dog poops on the street. It makes me wonder if the city government should put up a sign telling everyone to pick up after themselves.

On days that don't rain, I see many bigger dogs in the mountains where my bus to Academia Sinica passes by. Black, white, and light brown. I saw one small dog once. Hung Li-rung, a doctoral student at the Institute of Taiwan History, Academia Sinica, conducts her research on zoo in Taiwan during the Japanese colonial period. She told me that we see more bigger dogs in the mountains because smaller ones cannot compete with bigger ones. She claimed that many people abandon their dogs on the mountains once they decide not to have the pets anymore, because of the Buddhist idea of "fangsheng" 放生 (release to its own livelihood). She advocated pet adoption to avoid problems like this.