“Hi. My name is Oliver, and this is my story. I live on an exclusive housing estate in Myanmar. Picture, if you will, a gated community with excellent recreational facilities. The estate is a selection of luxury villas, houses with large gardens, and several apartment buildings kept immaculate by numerous grounds staff and security personnel. Most residents have international backgrounds and live in rented accommodations; the majority are business people from other parts of Asia.

“But my life wasn’t always so blessed. I do not know who brought me into the estate, but it probably was in the late spring of 2015. A female Husky puppy and I were the homeowners’ pets. Their daughter went to school abroad after their vacation, and we were left to the servants. Unsupervised, we started to roam around the estate, foraging for food and sleeping outdoors, often joined by the street dogs, which are abundant in Myanmar.

“One Saturday morning in early October 2015, a young lady was on her way to the swimming pool when she noticed the security guard of her apartment building talking to me (a disheveled golden retriever puppy lying by his desk). From my appearance, it was immediately obvious that I had belonged to somebody on the estate, and she assumed that I had wandered off and gotten lost. I looked at her with my big brown eyes and smiled at the lady with the beautiful aura."