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[luvoboe]

We lived in Seoul, near kyungbok palace and had 3 dogs. We have 2 shih-tzus, 5.5 kg and 3.5 kg and a sapsalgae. He's 25kg. For most of the time we just had the bigger shih-tzu and the sapsalgae, but for a few months in the city we had the other shih-tzu, too. We had A LOT of problems and were harassed constantly! Our dogs are very well behaved, friendly, and don't bark. People still complained EVERY time I walked them. They were both puppies then, so I took them out 4-5 times a day. We went out of our way to train them. They can't run around the apartment because the noise might bother our downstairs neighbor. We trained them not to bark, (our big dog used to bark if he heard another dog barking). They will sometimes bark if the doorbell rings, but that's rare. If someone wants to pet them, they have to sit first, (the dogs, not the person), They are also trained to heal while we're out walking. We even sent our big dog off to a training camp for 4 months so that he would be super obedient! They honestly didn't do anything but walk around and do their business outside, which we cleaned up right away, yet people complained constantly. In both places, pets were allowed, so they couldn't do anything about it, but it was very stressful. It's the reason why we moved out of Seoul. Where we live now, no one cares! It's so great! We can walk and play and have a great time without having to worry about anyone complaining. I think the main reason we had problems was because of our big dog. Most people are not very tolerant of big dogs no matter how friendly or well behaved they may be. We may have just had bad luck, but we lived in two different places, one was an office-tel and the other was a ville and both places were bad for us. We were actually going to move to a house where we wouldn't have any neighbors at all, but the commute would have been to complicated. We nervously moved into an apartment here, in dongtan, and are very very happy!
We also have a car, but sometimes, I'd have to take the little guys to the vet. I'd just stick them in a carrier and hop on the train or bus or whatever. I never had any problems. If I took a taxi, I could just hold them in my arms. A pet sitter is another story. Most vet's offices won't take our big dog. Our dogs had to stay a month in a dog hotel while my husband had surgery and was in the hospital recovering and they came home covered in feces and urine and matted so bad that they had to be shaved. Before we took them we asked that they be kept together and walked at least twice a day. They said they'd be happy to do that and they did neither. Neji was in a cage alone on one floor and Newrungi was tied up to a cabinet on another floor. I'm only guessing that since they were covered in their own waste and looked like street dogs they weren't walked very often either. A few months after that my hubby's health was still bad, so he took 2 months off from work. For one of those months we went away to a quiet place in the country. During that time, we had a wonderful person come and stay at our place and take care of our dogs. We only had 2 at the time, so it is possible to find a sitter. I think if you're willing to separate them, it would probably be a lot easier. Our Shih-tzu has horrible separation anxiety, so we couldn't separate them. We actually got the second dog for the shih-tzu. We jokingly say that Newrungi, (our big dog), is Neji's, (our first shih-tzu), pet. Ten-ten is a foster dog that decided to stay... So, if you got through this whole post, my advice is to stick with a small dog or be prepared for a battle if you do get a big dog. Be warned that in seoul, big is surprisingly small. I think cocker spaniel size and smaller would be ok. I'm pretty sure that if all of our dogs were small, we wouldn't have had many problems at all.