On June 20, 2017, the new addition to the apartment arrived, the little fluff butt also known as Shirie. I had been wanting to adopt a dog for years, but it just had never seemed like the right time. Either I lived abroad, or I was in school. After I finished my graduate degree, E agreed to adopt a dog with me–on one condition, I had to find a job first. Well I finally got that job, so then I could get that dog. E wanted a golden retriever, but we had no space and I wanted a Korean Jindo, but E wouldn’t had no idea what a Jindo was. We then both agreed to find a shiba inu dog. It took us awhile because shiba inus are not common dogs for rescuing.
Eventually, we saw a photo of a shiba inu jindo mix, that had a this gorgeous fluffly tail, named Lynn. We fell in love with her instantly. Shortly after, we found out that she was located in South Korea and we would not be able to meet with her prior to adoption. We applied to adopt her and the rescue agency, Hope for Donghae Paws, responded quickly and the process to adopt Lynn began. The whole adoption process, from finding her to her arrival in the US, took about one month and what a long month that was. E and I were far too excited for Lynn’s arrival.
During our arduous wait, we discussed names for her. We wanted to keep Lynn as a middle name, but we also wanted to find a new name for her to make her feel like more of our family. Of course, I suggested Mochi as a name, but E said Mochi sounded too masculine. He suggested Haru, but I thought so many shiba inus are named Haru and it wasn’t unique enough. Eventually, we decided on Shirie, a variation of Bokshiri (복실이), meaning fluffy (later I found out her name also means lucky in Korean). While at work, E told his coworker her name. His coworker commented that ‘Shirie’ means butt in Japanese. Unintentionally, we named our dog ‘Fluffy Butt’ and there could not be a more fitting name. Since Shirie was a stray, who had previously been adopted, we later learned that her name before ‘Lynn’ was Bokshiri, emphasizing even more that we chose the right name for our fluffy butt.
Please keep following for more about Shirie’s story as she grows with us. I will be returning to some travel updates in the upcoming posts.
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