'Mini' was my dog in Korea. My family called him that because of his breed: Miniature Pinscher. He has a very tiny body: he weighs two kilograms and is less than half-a-meter long. His short, glossy black hair shines after a shampoo. Its black color is perfectly harmonized with the brown band over his four ankles. He has a face as small as my fist; big black watery eyes; a sparkling black nose, always wet; a long mouth outlined with a brown color down to his neck. He has two small round brown dots over his eyes; a short but stiff tail that wags swiftly when he welcomes the family or feels happy; relatively big ears which are straightened up normally but folded down after a long sleep in a warm place.

He is so skinny that I can feel all his bones by touching him. I can also see the striped red-purple veins on his flexible ears. He likes warm, even hot places; so he always creeps under the blanket placed on the floor of a centrally heated room.

Mini came to my house, carried by my son in his half-opened parka on a windy, chilly afternoon in February 1998. My son and his friend saw a tiny lost dog in front of the main entrance of his school, wearing a grey, pink and white striped coat. He was looking around, surrounded by many students in the morning of that day.

A lot of students tried to touch him but he threatened them away, making wrinkles on his nose, showing his teeth and growling at them.

My son told me that he looked at the dog for some time and approached him slowly. He thought to himself, "I honestly wish you could live with us." Then he thrust out his palm towards the dog's nose. He let the dog smell the scent of his hand first then patted him with the other hand, then he held the little poor thing in his arms. All his friends agreed that my son should be the lost dog's master-to-be. So he took him to the night-duty teacher's room because he was nearly frozen, where he thought he would revive in warm and quiet room. He then said to the teacher that if the dog's real owner didn't show up he would carry him home after school.

During the day my son talked with his friends about the next barrier - mother's permission. They all came home together that day and my son asked me if he could raise a dog, and I saw that he was hiding something in his parka. His friends then explained that their class president gave my son a dog because he had too many dogs in his apartment. They said that they already had dogs, so they couldn't keep another one. They begged me to permit my son to raise a dog, at which point my son produced this little black puppy. They had already been to the vet for a health check-up. I could only say 'yes', though I was well aware that my children, especially my son, have allergies to certain things. It was difficult for me to turn down my son's wish. I had recently been given advice from a professor that I had better buy a real dog for my early-teenage children to stop them talking to the stuffed toy-dogs which they had kept from their babyhood - they have always said to me, "Don't hurt my babies," and making me to kiss their puppies. He has been with us for three years and made our lives happy.