Dad fitted right into the cliché of men with their dogs. He had quite a few of them over his lifetime.

For some reason he knew dogs and breeds very well. Something admirable about his generation is the extent of tacit knowledge they acquired without a lot of reading.

This chronicle is about the dogs in his life (that I know of). Maybe that presents a dimension of him that wasn't obvious.

I remember a small dog when I was a toddler; the name escaped me. I'm sure there were a few before that too.

As I grew into a small kid, Blackie came around. After a few years he was given away to a relative, I'm not sure why.

All these time we lived in landed terrace houses, pets were no issue. When I was nine, we moved to a shop house on the second-storey. Dad was trying to cut cost.

Dog became impossible, but there was an attempt at having rabbits. That was a unique experience that didn't last; these rabbits left pallets of waste all over the floor. I can't imagine Mom being pleased about that.

Quite some years passed before we finally settled in the house of our own. One day Dad came back with two puppies; they were siblings. One was white, the other brown. They were beautiful; not in the sense that all puppies are beautiful. They looked good in the Darwinian fitness sense.

After a week or two, Dad decided he couldn't keep both. So me and him took the brown one to animal shelter to give away. The puppy got picked up for adoption before we even left.

The white one that stayed with us was Benji. Benji would go along to see me all the way to adulthood.

Many years later Dad brought home a puppy Rottweiler. I don't know what motivated him.

She didn't stay harmless for long. She grew into size not long after, and started to become a health hazard to Benji, injuring him only by playing. She greeted me excitedly when I was home, but even that was too aggressive for my taste.

It was so much that Dad built a cage to contain her. Eventually he decided to sell her. Apparently the buyer was very pleased about her aggression level.

After this, there was only Benji and no one else.

Benji kicked the bucket after 18 human years. He was barely together in his last few years. Every time he got sick, my folks managed to nurse him back. Mom said they discussed putting him down, but they didn't have the heart to.

Finally one day I got a call from Mom: "Benji died."

I went home. Benji was lying on the porch; Dad was digging a hole at our side lawn. Now that I think about it, the fact that we had a corner unit terrace house made such a rare burial site possible.

I sat by Benji, remembering him as a puppy picking bones and sit between my legs.

Dad picked up Benji, said "go have a good sleep, boy," then proceed to bury him.

Benji burial site eventually came up with a small tree.

Dad had not adopted a dog ever since.

I'm not sure why. He was still healthy, and Mom hasn't display serious problem. If I'm being overly generous, maybe he wasn't sure he could give the best care anymore. It didn't cross my mind but I should've advised him to get another dog, if only for his mental well-being.

Dad suffered mental health issues in ways I didn't fully understand. Perhaps dogs were a spiritual crutch for him.

He was far from the only person in the world with problems. But the fact that he didn't succumb to other forms of vices was rather astonishing. That rubbed off on me in a big way.

For the last one and a half years of his life (with mom largely not around), he was alone a lot. Not having a dog could've made him feel even more lonely, considering what he was used to. If I had been more thoughtful, I would've gotten him a puppy.

For some reason, the drive to have pets was not instinctive for me. Among many good ideas, this rarely floats up to the top of my head.

I wonder why this is so, given Dad's influence.

I'm open to having one in the future. I'm not dying to though. I imagine whoever I adopt would resemble me in some ways. Even if it didn't, it eventually would.

There are not a lot of things in the world that look up to you unconditionally. When you are down, you want every small win you can get.

It's not just about love. There's something about loyalty that men crave. Loyalty not to the winner, but to the team.

Sometimes that's all the sense of security you need to fight the world. I want to think that Dad's dogs gave him that.