中壢英語國際演講會 Chungli Toastmasters Club

C2 –Organize Your Speech

Topic: We are family                             Iris 2008/10/03

Good evening, fellow members and guests,

It’s my honor to delivery my C2 speech “We are family”. I would like to share some stories about my lovely dog, Lucky.

First of all, let me show you a video (time:30 seconds)

12 years ago, a summer afternoon, my parents took a dog from my grandmother’s home. At first sight, Lucky looked like a stupid dog, because my grandmother’s home was in the countryside, Lucky was curious about everything in the new environment, for example, we remembered that he sat in front of the television and paid attention to watch it and listened to the sounds for a while. He was scared to cross the road because he’d never seen many people or cars on streets before, In order to be familiar with the new environment; my father took him for a walk every day.

Actually, Lucky was a smart and warm dog and although he couldn’t speak, we talked to him by using body language or eye contact and he knew exactly what we meant. For example every Sunday was his shower time, my father would point to the bathroom and said: “Hey, Lucky, it’s time to take a shower” he immediately stood up and went to the bathroom. After taking a shower, he liked to take a rest in front of the house and then enjoyed his sunbathing.

In Chinese New Year, my brother and I always gave Lucky a red envelope and tied it around his neck. Until last year, we created a special style for him. As you can see from the photo that Lucky wore a blue scarf and he looked like a “country girl”. We thought he knew that we made some changes in his appearance, because he was scared to move, and just stood there for a while.  We felt excited and took some photos and said: “Lucky, you are so cute, it’s your new style in this Chinese New Year”

Every day, when we went back to our sweet home, Lucky always shook his tail to welcome us. It was the most important and happy time for our family;

Unfortunately, Lucky ran away from home this year and never returned. He was 12 years old; it was equal to being 84 years of age in human years. We believed that he didn’t let us worry about him and he found a good place to rest.

Recently, there was a movie about dogs" 10 promises to my dog", there is a sentence that I totally agree with “For dogs, there are 10 years to live, human beings should treat them with more kindness and love.” Our family doesn’t intend to raise a new dog in the short term, because we still think Lucky is alive in our memory.

If people have the ability and money to raise pets I hope you can treat them with love, if not, when you see dogs, cats or any other pets, you can just say: “How cute you are and walk away, that will be fine.”

Finally, I want to say: " Lucky, thanks for being with us for 12 years, and we will cherish everything about you."

Toastmasters!