Our Pet Dog - Scot

Back in Dec 1996 my family bought a beagle as a pet but the story behind his adoption is an episode on its own and here is what happened. Our son had a minor accident on his way home from school. As he was crossing the pedestrian crossing on the slip road next to his school (this was at about 4:30 PM?), a lady driver turning the corner and entering the slip road did not notice him and knocked into him. She stopped to help him up and even brought him to the nearest clinic and from there they took a series of x-rays of him to check for broken bones, etc.
Of course he is protected by the precious Blood of Jesus and nothing happened to him other than him being in a slight state of shock from the incident. My wife and I were not aware of the incident because he did not call us to inform of the incident and we had a shock when we reached home - there was a set of x-ray films on the dining table and a short note to say that he had an accident and that he had gone to church for a meeting. We rushed to church and took him out of the meeting and examined him and were very relieved when we found out that he was completely unharmed.

And so we sat him down the next day to talk with him to find out how we could help him and that was when we discovered he wanted to have a pet (there was no mention nor discussion prior to this incident of any pets). And so, we decided that he should get a dog since he was born in the year of the dog (Chinese calendar). We went shopping for a pet that weekend and here were some criteria - a male and not a large dog as large dogs would shed much fur and the dog cannot be of a fierce breed (like dobermann or alsatian or bull-dog, etc).

We visited one petshop and saw a number of puppies but these were all females and so we rejected all the animals there. When the owner asked what we were looking for, we said we were shopping for a small male puppy. And she gave us an address stating that there was an 'about 6-months old' puppy currently owned by a lady living in Tampines and that she was keen to sell the dog since her children had outgrown the craze over the puppy and that the dog was basically bought as a Christmas present for the children. Now we visited the house in December and so we reckoned that the dog would no longer be a puppy (technically) since it is about 15 months old since puppies are only put up for sale when they are around 3 months old and we would be approaching its second Christmas.
The sorry state of the dog touched our son's heart and his whimper for affection melted our son's heart. It was cooped up in a cage that it had outgrown and there was a start of a hunch in its posture and so we decided to save the dog and bought it from the lady. The purchase date was December 22, 1996 and so up to this day, we still celebrate its 'redemption day' as we felt we had redeemed it from its 'bondage' (the cage) and given it a new lease of life.