Sunday was a day off for Nguyen Thanh Ro, 30, from Tan Thanh district in Long An province. He was taking time to go to the rice field with the dog named Mino.

In the last six years, after Ro’s son passed away when he was two years old, the dog has become attached to Ro, sticking to him like glue. Every time Ro goes to work near home, Mino always runs after him. 

Mino was brought to Ro’s family when his son was two. The boy loved the dog and liked playing only with Mino. However, the boy later died in an accident.

Nguyen Thi Ut, 61, Ro's mother, said when the funeral of the boy was organized, Mino didn’t run and play with people as usual, but lay quiet in a corner of the house.

“When my grandson was buried, Mino quietly followed people’s footsteps to the grave. It went to the corner of the field and cast its eyes toward the grave,” Ut recalled.

On the day when Ro completed the construction of his son’s grave, Ro could not find his dog. He called the dog for lunch, but there was no reply. After a lot of searching, Ro discovered the dog was on the son's grave. The dog was seen curled up on the marble slab with its head toward the headstone.

“The dog goes to the grave of my son and lies there from morning to afternoon. Sometimes it stays there through the night. Only at mid-day when it is too hot does it come home for a while and return to the grave later,” the man said.

Ut, when seeing the dog lying under the sun and rain, felt sorry for him. She told the son to chop down thick bamboo to set up a temporary roof over the grave to create a place for Mino.

The story about the loyal dog has spread on social networks. Admiring the affectionate dog, a benefactor came to help Ro build a corrugated iron roof above the grave to protect Mino from the rain and sun.

Ha Nguyen