How Pawfect Witness™ Began: It Started With One Dog
- Vancity Officiant Team
- 1 day ago
- 8 min read
Before Pawfect Witness™ had a name, there were no guests, no audience, and no project. There were simply two people getting married, and one dog standing beside them.
Before Pawfect Witness™, There Was Fi Chai
When we got married, there was no wedding in the traditional sense. There were no guests, no wedding party, and no audience watching us exchange vows. It was simply the two of us, and Fi Chai.
He was the only one there with us.
At the time, we were not trying to make a statement about animals, family, or what a wedding should look like. We simply could not imagine getting married without him there. Fi Chai had shared our everyday life, our home, and so many years with us. His presence did not need an explanation.
He belonged there because he belonged to our family.
Years later, when Pawfect Witness™ began to take shape, we would look back at that day differently.
Perhaps the idea did not really begin in 2024.
Before there was a name, a paw-print certificate, a pet blessing, or a project for other couples, there had already been one little dog standing beside us during one of the most important moments of our lives.
Fi Chai was our first witness.
When Fi Chai Left
Fi Chai passed away in 2022.
Anyone who has deeply loved an animal knows that losing them changes the shape of everyday life. The routines remain for a while. The familiar places are still there. But someone who had quietly occupied those spaces is suddenly missing.
For us, loving Fi Chai did not disappear when he died. Neither did we want that love to exist only as grief.
We did not know what would come next. But eventually, that love found somewhere else to go.
Then We Found Fagu and Maji
In 2023, almost by chance, we came across Fagu online.
Fagu was a three-legged Miniature Schnauzer living in Fuzhou, China. After a serious injury, his original owner did not want to pay for the surgery he needed and asked for him to be put down.
But the veterinarian made a different decision.
They chose to save his life.
Fagu survived, eventually losing one of his legs. Years later, somehow, his story travelled across the world until it reached us in Vancouver.
We had never met him in person.
There was no visit to the shelter, no introduction, and no moment when we stood among different dogs deciding which one we wanted. We saw Fagu's story from thousands of kilometres away and decided that he already had a home with us.
Then Fagu made the journey himself.
He flew alone from Fuzhou, China, travelling thousands of kilometres to Vancouver.
The first time we ever saw him in front of us was at Vancouver International Airport.
There was no meeting to decide whether he was the right dog for us. By the time we saw him for the first time, we were not meeting a dog we might adopt.
We were picking up a member of our family and bringing him home.
Fagu was never a replacement for Fi Chai. That was never the point. But somewhere along the way, we began to feel that perhaps the love Fi Chai had left behind was showing us where it could go next.
A few months later, we realized our home had room for one more animal life.
This time, we did not search for a particular dog. In fact, we did not want to choose.
We reached out to the same shelter in Fuzhou and asked one question:
Which dog needs to leave the shelter the most?
That question led them to Maji.
She had already spent four years living in the shelter. For all that time, no one had chosen her. She was there every day, but somehow remained almost invisible, like a little dog the world had simply overlooked.
Until someone was asked to look.
The shelter chose Maji.
And that was enough for us.
We did not meet her first. We did not ask whether another dog might suit us better. We did not need to compare.
If Maji was the one who needed to leave, then Maji was the one who would come home.
Like Fagu before her, Maji flew alone from Fuzhou, China, travelling thousands of kilometres to reach a family she had never met.
And just like Fagu, the first time we ever saw her face to face was at Vancouver International Airport.
That was when the dog nobody had chosen for four years finally came home.
Looking back, perhaps one of the most meaningful things about Fagu and Maji is that we never really felt that we chose either of them.
There was no selection process. There was no list of qualities they needed to have. There was simply a life that needed somewhere to go, and room in our family for that life.
Maybe it was chance. Maybe it was timing.
Or perhaps, in the way we have come to understand it, they were part of what Fi Chai had left for us.
The love he left behind made room for two more lives to come home.
Fagu survived because, at a moment when someone else was prepared to give up on him, a veterinarian saw a life worth saving.
Maji waited four years until one question finally caused someone to see the dog who had been there all along.
And we never needed either of them to prove why they should be chosen.
Being seen was enough.
Perhaps that is why the idea of being seen has become so important to us.
Sometimes being seen means being rescued. Sometimes it means being given a name, a photograph, a place in a family, or simply having someone stop long enough to acknowledge that you were here.
And sometimes, all it takes is for someone to ask:
Who have we not seen yet?
In 2024, Pawfect Witness™ Found Its Name
By 2024, our personal lives and our work creating wedding ceremonies began to intersect in a new way.
We had spent years watching couples acknowledge the people who mattered to them during their ceremonies: parents, grandparents, siblings, friends, children, and those who could no longer be there.
But for many couples, there was another member of the family whose importance was just as real.
Their animals.
That was when Pawfect Witness™ formally began.
Through paw prints, keepsake certificates and blessings incorporated into wedding ceremonies, couples could give their animals a visible place in the moment.
It was never about turning a pet into a wedding prop. It was about acknowledging a relationship that already existed.
For some couples, their dog had been there through almost the entire relationship. For others, an animal had been part of their home before they ever met their partner. Some wanted an animal physically beside them. Others wanted to remember one who had already passed away.
The details were different, but the acknowledgement behind them was the same:
You are part of our family. You are part of our story. You belong here.
And perhaps that was why Pawfect Witness™ felt so natural to us.
We had already made that same choice years earlier without giving it a name.
We had Fi Chai.
Then Other Animals Became Part of the Story
Once Pawfect Witness™ began, something we had not fully anticipated started happening.
It was no longer only our story.
Couples began bringing their own animals into their ceremonies and finding their own ways to acknowledge them. Dogs left paw prints. Cats became witnesses. Other animals, large and small, found their way into certificates, blessings and moments of remembrance.
Some were physically present. Some were represented by a print or a photograph. Some had already died, but their families still wanted their names and their place in the family to be acknowledged.
Every time this happened, Pawfect Witness™ became a little less about something we had created and a little more about something people already understood.
Animals matter to us in ways that do not always fit neatly inside the word pet.
They can be companions, family, witnesses to different chapters of our lives, and sometimes the quiet presence beside us when almost no one else is there.
Fi Chai had been exactly that for us.
Something Was Beginning to Grow Beyond Weddings
As more animals became part of Pawfect Witness™, another question slowly emerged.
What about the animals who have no one?
The animals Pawfect Witness™ had acknowledged through weddings were fortunate in one important way: somebody loved them enough to insist that they mattered.
But not every animal has that.
Some have no family. Some are abandoned. Some are forgotten. Some suffer without ever having a person who will remember their name. And some never receive a name at all.
Perhaps our experiences with Fagu and Maji had already taught us why this question mattered so much.
Sometimes a life can be there all along.
It simply needs someone to see it.
We began wondering whether the same idea of acknowledgement could one day extend beyond weddings, creating a place not only for animals surrounded by people who loved them, but also for those who had no one standing beside them.
At that point, it was still something we imagined for the future.
Then we learned about Wang Wang.
Wang Wang Brought the Future Forward
Wang Wang's story affected us deeply, but she did not create Pawfect Witness™.
By then, the idea had already been growing for years, first unknowingly through Fi Chai, then through Fagu and Maji, and eventually through the animals and families we met through our wedding work.
What Wang Wang changed was the timeline.
Something we had imagined doing one day suddenly felt like something we should begin now.
That decision eventually became the Wang Wang Memorial Bench in Vancouver, the first public Pawfect Witness™ project to take the idea of acknowledgement beyond weddings and into a physical place of remembrance.
Wang Wang's story itself belongs somewhere else in this journey. Her life, what happened to her, why we chose a memorial bench, and what that project represents are all part of the broader philosophy behind Pawfect Witness™.
Looking Back, Perhaps It Was Always There
It is easy to look backwards and create a neat story out of things that did not feel connected while they were happening.
When we got married with only Fi Chai beside us, we were not creating Pawfect Witness™.
When we lost him, we were not developing a philosophy.
When Fagu and Maji entered our lives, we were not planning an animal project.
And when Pawfect Witness™ formally began in 2024, we did not know where it might eventually lead.
Each part simply happened.
Only later could we see the thread connecting them.
A dog who stood beside us when nobody else did.
The love that remained after we lost him.
A veterinarian in Fuzhou who looked at an injured dog and chose to save his life.
A three-legged dog who flew thousands of kilometres alone to meet the family waiting for him on the other side.
A little dog who spent four years almost invisible in a shelter, until one question finally caused someone to look at her.
And another journey of thousands of kilometres, made alone, toward a family she had never met.
Couples who understood instinctively why their own animals deserved a place in their ceremonies.
And eventually, a question that became impossible for us to ignore:
If acknowledgement matters so much for the animals who already have someone to love them, who will acknowledge the ones who do not?
We still do not know exactly where that question will lead Pawfect Witness™.
But we know where it started.
With two people getting married, no guests at all, and one little dog standing beside them.
His name was Fi Chai.
