[My I1 Writing-Essay] This is the story about Tau my favorite dog in my life.
After I had finished my B.S. degree and worked in Department of Earth Science of National Central University from 1994 to 2000 in Taoyuan, northern Taiwan, I changed my interest from earth science to ecology. Then I studied very hard by myself for two years to pass the entrance exam of the Graduate Institute of Natural Resource Management of National Dong Hwa University in Hualien in 2000. It was a marvelous experience for me, because I never thought that I could be a graduate student in ecology, especially because ecology is such a different field of study from earth science. Before I started to move to Hualien for my first semester, my father died. I began a new life in Hualien, but I always felt sorrowful because I missed my father so much. Then Tau, my dog, came to my life and changed me.
One day, my classmates and I wanted to go to the playground to do some exercise. Halfway there, a little, ugly, stinking, homeless doggy followed us for a long time. We played with her for awhile, but we didn’t want her to keep following us, so we ran and left her far away. Then we arrived at the playground and jogged. About a half hour later, we started to go back to our dormitory. Suddenly, the little doggy appeared in front of us and kept following us. We felt very sorry for her, so my friend Abowl and I decided to find someone to keep her. We named her “Tau”, which in Chinese means a horse that carries something on its back. We wished she could be like a horse: be strong and take care of herself.
We posted an ad to find someone who wants to keep a doggy. We took her to see a veterinarian and treated her skin disease. After a few days, a girl e-mailed me and told me she want to see Tau, because her dog had died a few weeks before. Then she came to my dormitory and played with Tau for awhile, and she wanted to keep Tau because Tau was like her dog so much. We made an appointment with the girl, and I kept looking after Tau for a few days, but my classmates and I all liked Tau, and we couldn’t bear to part from her. On the day the girl would come to take her away, we felt so sad and took all the time to play with her. But the girl never appeared! We were so angry that she didn’t keep her promise, but I was happy to keep Tau again.
After a long discussion with Abowl, we decided to keep Tau, but it was really a tough challenge to look after a doggy. Abowl always left Hualien to Ilan for field experiments for a long time, so I had to spend a lot of time to take care of Tau by myself and cooperated with my roommates to prevent the housemaster from detecting that I was breaking the rules about not having pets in the dormitory. During that period, my life was alarmingly dangerous, and I almost failed my accomplishments that semester. As time went by, Tao grew up from an ugly doggy to a beautiful dog. She brought me a lot of troubles, but she always made me happy because she looked happy all the time and she took most of my sorrow away.
