Many tears - Work Experience

0. The occasion

'Many tears' is an abandoned-dog shelter, one of the places where you do work experience here. Actually, until I went to the work experience on Thursday, I had zero knowledge about the work-experience program run here, but fortunately, having done the work experience by chance on Thursday, I'm leaving this writing.

1. Introduction

I'm not sure how much there is to guess from the institution name 'Many tears.' In fact, it was very hard for me to connect Many tears with 'dogs.' This institution is a very small-scale shelter for abandoned dogs. I'm not sure I can be certain it's very small-scale. Because this institution had over about 30 dogs. The age range, from puppies to fully grown dogs, looked diverse, and the breeds looked diverse too. Anyway, if I organize the characteristics of this institution a bit, they're as follows.

1) Over 30 puppies~dogs. Diverse in breed.

2) 'Volunteers' exist.

3) It's used as a work-experience site.

2. What I did

What I did here, they said, was about walking the dogs, brushing the dogs, and 'socializing' with the dogs. Of those, what I actually went and did was walking and brushing. Since it was raining that day, and unfortunately, due to that institution's schedule, there weren't many dogs that could go out, I did the task of taking out a total of just 4 dogs and bringing them back. Well, I finished the whole work experience simply by walking them and, for one of them, even brushing it; it wasn't work that demanded a high degree of expertise, I just experienced extremely simple work. However, I thought there was something else worth paying attention to here.

3. Background

I thought about why on earth they place the work of walking with dogs, brushing dogs, and sharing 'communion' with dogs as 'work experience' or 'job experience,' and while it's a bit ambiguous to think it's because this is work they can do, there was a strong sense that, through the institution called 'Many tears,' they're making it so that students can accept dogs 'naturally.' As you may know, Europe has quite a strong dog-raising culture. How strong did I feel it was? To the extent that, because there are many cases of people bringing dogs to the beach, there are even 'No dogs allowed' signs at beach entrances. Of course, even so, in winter, since there are hardly any people, they just bring their dogs onto the beach sand anyway. At any rate, they bring dogs to national parks too, and bring dogs to hospitals and tie them up outside. (One curious thing is that the dogs don't bark. So even when brought like this it's actually not noisy and there's nothing to worry about. Should I say these dogs are incredibly well trained..) So this kind of experience of getting close to dogs is enormously helpful to students. Experiencing things that are highly likely to become a part of their lives is, I think, one of the quite productive activities.

4. Other points

The abandoned-dog shelter was quite far out in the countryside, and um... actually, Britain's 'residential-area structure' is too hard to theorize. It's ambiguous to call it a typical suburb, and since there's so little that can be explained by urbanization, I also feel it's ambiguous. Because the area near where I live is definitely not a city. The most accurate description is just an ordinary 'village,' but this insti

tution is located in a place that's too ambiguous to even call a 'village,' and there wasn't a single house nearby.

As you can see, there isn't even an area visible nearby that could be called a village, and it's just mostly full of grassland. (The reason there are no rice paddies or fields is that here they use it more as 'pasture' than for farming.) Moreover, the fact that there are volunteers here too is.. ugh.. a moment when I understand this country's culture a little. According to a book I'd briefly read before coming to Britain, 'volunteering' in Britain is far from the volunteering Koreans think of and really feels just like 'work,' I recall - and it really does seem so..... It's volunteering, but rather than being especially more rewarding and such, there's a strong sense of it just passing by as 'a credential/career.'

To wrap up the writing, I'll take a look at the photo of this institution's signboard that tells you the attitude toward 'dogs.' Personally, I really like the word 'friend.' It feels as if it emphasizes the philosophy here, I'd say..