“Was it the right decision to bring Choco home?” asks Yuna, the narrator of Keum Suk Gendry-Kim’s Dog Days. Choco is a malnourished and neglected Border Collie who lives outdoors in a dilapidated cage. She sits day in and day out exposed to the elements. Her owner barely pays her any attention. When Choco’s owner offers her to Yuna and her husband Hun, they don’t bring her home right away. Instead, they work to earn her trust. Hun visits Choco every day in her cage. He sits outside her open cage in the cold until she’s eventually willing to come out.

      When she finally leaves the cage, Yuna and Hun wonder about how she experiences the walk to her new home: “When was the last time she’d smelled the soil? Or smelled the scent of decomposing leaves? Or the bugs crawling under the leaves?” This potent moment is marred by an unglamorous arrival at home. Yuna and Hun’s other dogs, Carrot and Potato, play rough with Choco, even though they’re both neutered. Most worrisome, after living in such poor conditions outdoors, Choco is in extremely poor health. It’s not clear if she’ll even survive the transition to her new home. However, spending any more time in the outdoor cage would have undoubtedly been a death sentence for her. So was it the right choice? Unnerving (and often unanswerable) questions like this arise for Yuna and Hun throughout Dog Days. In lush brushstrokes, Gendry-Kim presents a portrait of the dilemmas of being a dog owner. 

      Long before they adopted Choco, there was Carrot. Yuna and Hun bought Carrot, a Welsh Corgi, from a pet store in Seoul to help Hun cope with the passing of his grandmother. But it is also true that Carrot came into their lives partly by chance—as Yuna admits, if the other Corgi in the shop had been handed to them, “that pup would have become ours instead.” Introducing their first dog into their home was not an easy adjustment. Carrot is anxious around other dogs and bites Yuna. They eventually get him neutered, and worry if that was the right decision. They debate sending Carrot to Dog Training Center because of his biting, but worry about stories of mistreatment, including one center where “The facility’s owner had beaten the dog with a pipe for excessive barking.” In all these moments, Gendry-Kim presents Yuna and Hun as an uncomfortable amount of power over the lives of their pets. They are completely in control of Carrot’s fate, but never entirely sure if what they’re doing is best for Carrot. This amusing behavior will be familiar to any pet owner. 

      One day, Yuna and Hun make a major change for the sake of Carrot. They move from Seoul to the countryside, partly to give Carrot more room to roam and (hopefully) thrive. At first, their new life outside the city seems close to idyllic. They go for long walks with Carrot on quiet country lanes. One of their elderly neighbors, Mr. Han, offers them a spot on his property so they can start a vegetable garden. They also adopt another puppy after it’s left on their doorstep, which they name Potato. 

      But then Hun discovers a trio of dogs in a shed on Mr. Han’s property. They soon disappear, without any explanation. Other dogs disappear in their neighborhood, and the book takes on some of the unnerving qualities of a horror novel. 

      All is made clear with the arrival of the Dog Vendor, a truck with a loudspeaker that blares: “Dogs and puppies wanted! Goats wanted!” Yuna captures how their once pleasant country life immediately becomes a nightmare with the appearance of the truck: “During the summer right after the rains, the sound of the loudspeaker would fill the air, making me anxious about what the dog butcher might do to our puppies. Sometimes, I felt as if I were the one in danger.” In this pivotal moment, a switch is flipped, making the characters and readers realize that the killers are all people you know and see every day. That kindly neighbor Mr. Han who let Hun and Yuna garden on his land? He turns out to be a major local dog butcher. In no time, the quandary for Yuna and Hun is clear to the reader: which dogs can they save? Often, it’s not many. This brutal realization makes Yuna and Hun’s tenderness toward their pets moving rather than frivolous. 

      In her afterword, Gendry-Kim reflects on the difficulties of addressing dog butchering in Korean culture, and the risks in doing so to an audience that would understandably react negatively:

      My greatest concern while writing this book was the risk of racial discrimination against Koreans or Asians abroad due to its content, a fear stemming from my own past experiences. I’ve experienced comments like, “Don’t           you eat dog? Go back to your country. . .” The last thing I wanted to do was to reinforce those stereotypes. 

In facing the grisly, unsettling details of dog butchering head on, Gendry-Kim provides a service to readers to contextualize a cruel but dying tradition. She also reminds readers of the emotional importance of dogs in the lives of owners like Yuna and Hun. Throughout Dog Days, we see Yuna and Hun put their lives second to the needs of Carrot, Potato, and Choco. On the other hand, we are also given glimpses into how the dogs help to heal Yuna and Hun’s emotional wounds. At one point, Yuna speculates that Hun is especially attached to Choco because of his own difficult childhood. This scene serves as another reminder for the reader of how much weight these dogs carry in our lives. 

      Again and again in Dog Days the question is asked: what is best for a dog? Often, the answer is far from clear. But, again and again, Yuna and Hun give themselves fully to finding out.

Lucas Adams

Editor and writer