Text | Abu
"Little Q", when I heard this name, the first thing that came to mind was naturally the 2004 Japanese film "Guide Dog Little Q" starring Kaoru Kobayashi.
The film of that year was adapted from the best-selling book "Goodbye, Koru" by Japanese author Kengo Ishiguro. In 2004, there were no guide dogs in China. Therefore, not only is the story touching, but also of great scientific and educational value.
For example, how to choose a guide dog?
Ms. Mito in Tokyo has a new litter of Labrador at home, want to choose a guide dog, at first repeatedly rejected, so the most important thing about the guide dog is to see - pedigree, strictly, the ancestors of the three generations are guide dogs to qualify for the shortlist, at least the father and mother have been guide dogs, ordinary people's dogs are not OK.
In the end, She couldn't resist the persistent Mito Lady and tried to get her to choose one of the five cubs. Five are very elf, how to choose?
Try to get the dogs to come over...
Hearing the master's order, the dogs sprinted over a hundred meters... Only one was left unresponsive. You think you eliminated this one in the first round?
Wrong, four were eliminated in the first round!
Because the criterion is: don't choose to come over immediately. Also don't choose ones that are too active and too easily affected by sound.
"Only those who know how to ask you questions with their eyes can choose."
Little Q, it's you!
15 years later, the Chinese version of "Little Q" was launched. It is also adapted from "Goodbye, Kolu", but it is not a remake, it is a reinterpretation of the copyright.
Like this poster, life in many ways the visually impaired people light up red lights, but in the company of guide dogs, there is a possibility of turning green.
In the dog movie, it is so easy to cry - this sentence is given to "Loyal Dog Hachiko" and "Ma li and me" who ran in tears, and "The Mission of a Dog" who recently ran in tears, and also to "Little Q".
But the dog's movie is also easy to fall into the cliché of sensationalism, fortunately, "Little Q" is not just sensational, but also does not use the dog element to package a human world's feelings, but similar to the Japanese original, starting from the guide dog itself, telling its life, its bond with several owners.
"If you want to skip those difficult dog scenes, shoot less dogs, shoot more people, of course, it is possible, but then it is not a dog movie, but a human movie, the two are very different." 」 Director Luo Yongchang said.
When luo Yongchang is mentioned, the first thing that comes to mind is that in addition to his cooperation with Du Qifeng for more than 20 years, a large number of works in the galaxy image ("Gunfire", "Hot Hand Rejuvenation", "Mobile Force"), and then there is the warm "Whenever Changes" in 2007 - in my opinion, this one is more Hong Kong feelings than "Old Port Zhengbiao", and it is more responsive to vicissitudes. Remember the theme song of the same name sung by Miriam Yang: Whenever there is a change, you know that time is gone.
To tell the truth, this pair in the play really has a sense of CP, and I don't believe you see the voice of the masses.
You may also feel familiar with director Luo Yongchang, not surprising, because he has guest starred in many Hong Kong films - "True Heart Hero", "Goodbye Ah Lang", "Gunfire", "One Hundred Years of Good Union" - but he is not addicted to drama, but in order to save money for the crew. "I used to write the script when I got to the scene, and if there was no suitable person, I would go on it myself." When you don't have enough budget, you have to do everything. ”
The apprentice brought out by Du Qifeng was also fully galaxy-inspired by the style of the left hand - iron blood in the left hand and warmth in the right hand. Like Du Qifeng, Luo Yongchang is actually quite good at shooting romantic and warm comedies. "Except for thrillers that don't know how to shoot, everything else can be." He said, "The master has not taught. ”
He chose to make "Little Q" because Luo Yongchang found that the guide dog service in Hong Kong did not start until 2012, and many people still did not know about guide dogs. He wanted to tell everyone how guide dogs serve the visually impaired.
The first plot that was touched was Li Baoting, a famous pastry chef played by Ren Dahua, who was blinded because of an eye disease. The Hong Kong Guide Dog Association gave him a guide dog, Xiao Q, but he was very resistant, hated fate for being unfair to him, and even hated Xiao Q - "Is this the second half of my life?" Shovel shovel pee! Sitting on a bench in the park, Li Baoting said hatefully. However, after a few moments, he bent down and unsheathed the guide saddle on Little Q's back, "I don't have a choice, but you can choose, you go!" ”
Yes, in the eyes of ordinary people, the life of the guide dog is also a tragic life, other dogs eat, drink and play, but they have to stay quietly by the owner's side, working all the time, worse than 996.
Therefore, when I heard Li Baoting's words, I couldn't help but feel a sour nose.
But what does the life of a true guide dog look like?
After watching the movie, I learned that it was at least five stages:
1
Family of origin
▲See the dog with the red ribbon on the right? That is the protagonist Little Q
Zoom in a little to see more clearly:
This Labrador is now 10 months old and has become Luo Yongchang's dog. At that time, he waited for the birth of this nest for the newborn puppy who appeared in the play, and said to himself: Regardless of men and women, the first one is Little Q! As a result, the first one was born as a "woman", so the film naturally became a "big heroine" play.
2
foster family
If it is a puppy with guide dog blood, as mentioned earlier, ancestral genes can be - three generations of puppies that are guide dogs, with stable blood and no aggression at all, such puppies will be transferred to "foster families" around two months of birth.
Why go to a foster home first instead of going straight to training? Mainly because there are few people in Hong Kong, the space of the Guide Dog Association is also very limited, and it cannot accommodate so many trained puppies. Therefore, puppies will generally be placed in foster homes first, while familiarizing themselves with the living environment and human life, and on the other hand, they will be sent to training schools by the owners of foster families, and they will return early and return to learn skills late.
Foster families are very beneficial to the training of guide dogs, they can be taken by their owners to restaurants, take the bus, adapt to escalators... Be able to integrate into the living environment as soon as possible.
▲ Yang Caini plays the owner of the foster family
3
Formal training
When the foster family reaches more than one year old, the dog begins formal training. The content includes training to be quiet, training not to eat what others give, training to walk with visually impaired people, following instructions, bypassing obstacles, alerting to dangerous situations, and so on. After about half a year of training, qualified guide dogs will begin to be assigned to visually impaired people.
This distribution is also very exquisite, according to the physical characteristics of the visually impaired to partner - for example, some people are taller, largest steps, fast pace, you must find a guide dog with the same pace.
After the successful matching, the guide dog and the owner will train together for a month and adapt to each other. After completing this step, the guide dog can accompany and serve the owner for more than a decade.
4
Long service period
General guide dogs can be served from about 2 years old to more than ten years old. But there are exceptions - some guide dogs will experience a period of "early retirement desire" at the age of seven or eight, and suddenly become reluctant to "saddle". At this time, you can't force the guide dog to serve again, the best thing to do is to let it retire naturally, otherwise if you barely work, the owner will also be in danger.
However, the long working life of guide dogs is not the 996 imagined by ordinary people - they can also play freely when they are not saddled; but once they are saddled, they enter the working state.
So, if you encounter a guide dog at work on the road (99% of what you can meet on the road is definitely working), don't touch them and tease them, feeding is not allowed, people are very serious about working.
5
Glorious retirement
After retirement, the guide dog has several pension options: the first is to still live in the home of the visually impaired owner, provided that the owner has the ability to provide for him; if not, the second choice is to return to the original sending family - "Little Q" and the "Guide Dog Little Q" of the year are such a destination, but also the home of Kelu in real life. If neither fails, then adopters are openly recruited from society.
In the movie "Little Q", these five stages are reproduced. What is warmer than the Japanese version is that the plot did not let Li Baoting die early, and after he returned to Hong Kong after heart surgery, he saw the last side of the seriously ill Xiao Q, who completed his life in the double love of serving the family and the foster family.
For visually impaired people, the only drawback of guide dogs is that there are too few.
There are only about 40 guide dogs in Hong Kong's service, and there are only a few hundred in the country, which is a drop in the bucket compared to the number of visually impaired people. A minimum of HK$200,000 is required to train a guide dog.
Moreover, not all visually impaired people can apply for a guide dog - only those who can travel with a blind cane can apply for a guide dog, because in case something goes wrong with the dog on the road, if it is a blind person who is incapacitated, it will be in danger.
You may ask, if blind people can walk freely with the help of a blind cane, why do they need a guide dog?
At that time, "Guide Dog Little Q" gave the answer one: with the guide dog will walk faster than the left and right tapping the blind cane, and the pace can be no different from that of ordinary people.
And "Little Q" gives the answer two: with the help of high technology (such as electronic maps), blind people can not only walk on their own regular routes, go to strange places or even abroad, maps plus guide dogs, is a reliable navigation system. Because the guide dog will stop at every corner or intersection, wait for the owner's next command, and then make the corresponding way.
It's really like this in the poster: no dog stops, there are dog rows.
Moved in the play, outside the play, learned some shooting stories, the same moved.
The first is "No animals are harmed by this film" in the end credits, which you may not see, and special effects are also used in "Little Q". "Our special effects are not 3D dogs, but..." In fact, when shooting the dying old Q, we made a fake shrunken hind leg with special effects, and used special effects to make the dog's eyes slowly close and walk through life." We don't give dogs injections to make these effects, so no animals are harmed. ”
By the way, Old Q is actually a male dog, so... The special effects also processed this part.
However, more touching than this basic principle, the filming of the film did not affect the career of the guide dog.
You may not have noticed that there are about ten small Qs in "Little Q", in addition to the childhood and old age of the little Q played by different dogs, there are as many as seven or eight adult service Qs.
Why find so many dogs as stand-ins? Because the biggest heroine is a Labrador named "Pudding", a guide dog in training. The director gave her all the highlights of the literary drama, but used a stand-in in the martial arts drama, that is, a large running scene, on the grounds that "the guide dog cannot be misled.". "If the guide dog under training is allowed to do intense exercise, she may not be able to do the guide dog in the future."
The car chase scene that made the audience cry actually used five or six doubles. Because I shot it over and over again, the dog couldn't run.
Therefore, not only are no animals harmed, but no animals have lost their careers because of this film. By the time the film was released, Pudding had begun her long service period with the visually impaired.
After watching "Little Q", what I want to say most is two points:
First, even if you don't like dogs, be kind to guide dogs and don't hinder or disturb their work.
Second, if you have a dog, walk the dog on a leash, your dog is not a guide dog, and no one can guarantee that it will not bite. Don't let society transfer hatred to dogs because of your own laziness.
In a way, to manage your own dog is to create a better social environment for a great dog like a guide dog.