Chapter Ninety-Six: Tag

Director Ding paused in surprise. He had not expected Zhang Congwen to want to train a working dog.

If it had been an ordinary pet dog, Director Ding had plenty of those in his kennel. But a working dog was not so easy to find.

After Zhang Congwen explained his exact requirements, Director Ding thought for a moment and said, “I do have a litter here you could take a look at. It’s just that their vaccinations aren’t complete yet, so you’ll have to wait until they’re fully vaccinated before anyone can see them.”

Zhang Congwen understood this perfectly. Puppies were far frailer than adult dogs. To ensure a high survival rate, they were usually kept away from outside contact until their vaccinations were complete, so that unknown germs from the outside world would not cause them to die young.

“All right, then. We’ll leave first and come back in three days,” Zhang Congwen said with a nod.

The main reason he had chosen to begin training the dog three days later was that Director Ding kept the Tibetan mastiff outdoors. Conditions outside were far more complex than those in a courtyard or a house, so Zhang Congwen wanted to leave himself a little more time to see whether the camera might capture things that were usually overlooked.

Three days later, Zhang Congwen arrived as promised. His first task was to review the surveillance footage around the dog’s cage.

From the recordings, Zhang Congwen discovered that this dog was indeed gentle only with Director Ding, and fiercely aggressive toward everyone else. The staff at Director Ding’s kennel would feed the mastiff snacks every day when they came to work, hoping to build some rapport with it.

Even so, the mastiff showed them no appreciation at all. It treated the employee it saw every day exactly the same as a stranger.

People often say that a Tibetan mastiff recognizes only one master in its lifetime, but that does not mean it will remain hostile to everyone else forever, especially not to someone like this employee, who saw it every day and brought it treats.

Aside from that, however, Zhang Congwen found no other issues in the footage.

Just as the surveillance video was nearing its end, Zhang Congwen suddenly noticed that before he had come to the kennel, a group of tourists had been there.

At first, because they were still at a distance, the mastiff did not react to the passersby and simply lay in its kennel in a daze.

Unexpectedly, even though it had not caused any trouble, it still drew the attention of several tourists. They first gathered not far from the cage to look on and point at the mastiff.

By then, the dog was already showing signs of unease.

Then one of the onlookers stepped forward. Taking advantage of the cage as a barrier, he boldly moved a few steps closer.

With only those few steps, the mastiff began to bark at him.

Zhang Congwen had thought the bold tourist would be frightened away by the mastiff’s enormous size, but to his surprise, the man actually started making threatening gestures at it.

The mastiff clearly felt threatened and barked even more frantically. Yet the tourist only grew more excited, teasing the caged dog in every way he could, all the while laughing and talking.

In the end, even the other tourists joined in.

Only after they had grown tired of the game did they leave, and only then did the mastiff slowly quiet down and return to its kennel.

At once, Zhang Congwen understood what had been going on.

According to Director Ding, the mastiff had not originally been nearly so hostile toward strangers. It was only after tourism developed in the area that the dog had begun to change.

The reason for that change in temperament lay with the tourists who came here.

If people had merely passed by normally, things would never have escalated to this point. But there were always tourists like the one in the video, who, because the mastiff was locked in a cage, would provoke it simply to show off their own courage. Over time, this made the dog increasingly sensitive and increasingly hostile toward strangers.

The reason Zhang Congwen could reach that conclusion was that after the strangers left, the mastiff quickly returned to its kennel. From this alone, it was clear that the dog’s barking was not born of anger alone, but of deep unease as well.

That meant the mastiff’s temperament was inherently somewhat sensitive. It was only because so few people used to pass this way, and so few stood around watching it, that this trait had not been obvious at first.

But as tourism developed, foot traffic increased, and people repeatedly and maliciously provoked the mastiff, its temperament became ever more touchy.

If it had been an ordinary dog, the problem might not have been nearly so severe. But this was a Tibetan mastiff.

Tibetan mastiffs were famous for their sheer size, and in the tales told about them, for their ferocity as well. Anyone passing by who saw a Tibetan mastiff would easily slap all sorts of labels on it.

Savage.

Terrifying.

Unfriendly.

Dangerous.

Likely to injure people.

Yet dogs are creatures that are remarkably adept at reading human emotions. Faced with those labels, over time the dog would begin to fear the way other people looked at it.

And the road in front of it was the only route leading to a scenic spot, so every day the mastiff was crushed beneath outside pressure until it could hardly breathe.

At that moment, Director Ding showed Zhang Congwen another video he had once filmed on his phone.

It had been taken while he was walking the mastiff outside. Someone behind them had suddenly tried to come closer, and the mastiff had immediately launched an attack.

But the dog had no real intention of hurting the person; after frightening the man off, it quickly calmed down.

At first, the man had been very afraid. But when he saw that the mastiff was wearing a muzzle, his courage surged back at once, and he tried once more to approach.

What no one expected was that this time the mastiff did not attack him at all. Instead, it kept avoiding him, unwilling to meet his gaze.

In the world of dogs, that gesture meant it did not want to start a conflict.

Yet this behavior was entirely different from the way it behaved inside the cage.

Zhang Congwen seemed to think of something and hurriedly asked, “Where was this video taken?”

Director Ding pointed to a mountain in the distance and said, “On a little mountain path over there. When I take him out for walks, I usually look for places with fewer people. That day, for some reason, a man suddenly darted out from the side of the road, and I happened to record it.”

After estimating the distance, Zhang Congwen finally had a complete understanding of the dog’s problem.

The source of the mastiff’s hostility toward humans was not simply its sensitive temperament. Part of it came from its instinct to guard. That was why it behaved so wildly when in the cage, yet remained comparatively docile on that mountain.

Once he confirmed that part of the behavior came from guarding instinct, Zhang Congwen finally felt at ease.

Guarding was, after all, the natural instinct of a dog like a Tibetan mastiff. It was not really a problem. It only needed a little correction.

The real issues to solve were only two: its sensitive temperament, and the aggressive behavior toward people that sprang from that sensitivity.