The tragedy happened three years ago, since then Mino spends long hours under the sun and rain on his little master’s headstone.
The bitch Mino has three of her four years of life clinging to the grave of her owner, a two-year-old boy who drowned in a ditch near his home in southern Vietnam, and from whom he never separated during the year. in which they coexisted.
Mino’s jet-black coat shines on the back of his back, where it takes on shades of a faded brown, which the family attributes to the long hours spent in the sun and rain on the grave of the dead infant in the province. of Long An, in the Mekong River Delta.
Nguyen Thi Ut, the little girl’s grandmother, tells Efe how three days after the burial, in the back of the house, the dog settled on the grave and there was no way for him to leave it. .
“I tried to stop him because he didn’t look good to me, but he always ended up coming back. In the end I decided to leave him,” the 57-year-old explains.
special relationship
Mino came to the family as a puppy, when the little khet was just one year old and from the beginning, Ut relates, they became friends, they spent the day playing together while their parents worked and their grandparents took care of the house. .
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The special relationship between the child and the puppy was broken by the tragic death of khet at the age of two: while his mother was cooking, the little one left the house, crossed the dirt road that separates the canal house bordering and fell into the water without anyone arriving in time to save him.
Despite initial attempts by the human family to move away, the animal does not abandon the tombstone of its small owner. Photo / EFE
He was buried behind the house, as is traditional in the Vietnamese countryside, and three days after the burial, Mino settled on the tombstone, the place where the longest time has passed since the tragedy occurred three years ago. years.
Kindly, the bitch goes to greet the visitors and stays leaning against the table at the entrance of the precarious house for a few minutes, but after a while she resumes her position on the tombstone, which is no longer will leave until hours after sunset.
Under the sun and rain
“He always comes into the house for a couple of hours at noon and then goes out again, even if it’s very sunny or raining. Sometimes he even spends the night,” explains Ut, convinced that the animal knows the what happened to the child and that his body is down there.
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The animal, naturally silent, does not bark or howl over the tomb, it simply leans back and stays there most of the day.
“Sometimes he takes some food or some fruit and leaves it next to the grave,” points out Nguyen Thanh Go, the deceased creature’s father.
While Ut is talking, the sister of the dead child, 6, plays around the house and Go, the father, takes care of the eleven-month-old baby, born two years after the tragedy.
The bitch is affectionate with them, but Ut comments that she has not achieved such a close relationship with any of her grandchildren as she had with khet.
Knowing the long hours that Mino spent in the sun and rain, a family friend gave them a shed to protect themselves, but they had to withdraw it within days due to complaints from a relative claiming ownership on terrain.
Faced with their demands, the family will organize a ceremony in March to move the tomb and bring it a few meters closer to the house.
“I’m sure that even if we change the grave, Mino will continue to spend the day there,” Ut recounts.
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