Coco is a golden retriever with soft, silky honey-colored fur and bright black eyes who wags her tail when you call her name. She is smart enough to add and subtract, or at least give the impression that she can do basic arithmetic, and will shake hands with you or fetch a Frisbee. Coco is a dog that any dog lover would be happy to call his or her own — and for NT$1,000 a year, they can, one weekend at a time.
Coco’s owner is Jack Zhu (朱寶生), a dog trainer who has run the Golden Retriever Club (黃金拾獵犬俱樂部) in Taipei for six years. The club’s 1,023 members can join Zhu and his dogs for group trips to the park, or they can take the dogs home for three days to a week at a time.
The rent-a-pet concept has grown in popularity worldwide, even as many animal advocates voice their disapproval. Some canine lovers who long for a faithful companion but are short on time or space say that renting dogs is a good solution until they can raise a pet of their own. Zhu is also adamant that letting members borrow his golden retrievers helps them better understand dogs and, in turn, learn how to treat them properly.
“The main purpose of the Golden Retriever Club is to rescue dogs and people. A lot of people just don’t understand dogs,” says Zhu.
Ten years ago, Zhu, who originally trained seeing-eye dogs, saw golden retrievers for the first time during a trip to the US. Impressed by their easygoing nature and trainability, Zhu brought back two dogs with him. Now he has a total of 20 golden retrievers (and one Jack Russell terrier, named Jack), who live with him and his wife in Taipei’s Xinyi District. On a recent visit, half of them were out with group members. When the dogs aren’t with their temporary owners, they spend their days hanging around the hobby shop Zhu runs on the ground floor of his building.
Zhu founded the Golden Retriever Club in 2002 after several dogless friends asked if they could take one of his golden retrievers home with them for a few days. The group’s members come from as far away as Taichung and Kaohsiung and are allowed to take dogs home for three days to a week, depending on their commute time to Taipei City. Zhu and his dogs also occasionally hold informal performances at the Xinyi District’s Shin Kong Mitsukoshi (新光三越) complex, during which the golden retrievers demonstrate how adroit they are at catching Frisbees and following commands.
Jiang Li-rui (姜禮瑞) became a member in July after his wife read about Zhu in a newspaper and says that his family plans to borrow a golden retriever once every two months or so. Both he and his wife work full-time and don’t feel like they have time to care for or train a dog properly.
Renting a dog is a compromise that works for his family, says Jiang, who adds that he feels safe letting his three young children play with Zhu’s highly trained golden retrievers and take them for walks in the park.
“We have a room that we wanted to keep off-limits to the dogs, and they just seemed to sense that. When they are indoors, they are very calm and they don’t run around or bark,” says Jiang.
Jiang says his family had adopted a dog from a wild dog rescue organization, but once home they found that the dog had not been properly housebroken and had a difficult time adjusting to living inside a city apartment.
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