10 обещаний моей собаке

An adaptation of a novel by Hare Kawaguchi. Akari Saito feels lonely at her own home. Her father is a workaholic surgeon who has no time for her, and her mother is hospitalized and in the last stages of a terminal disease. Akari wishes for a pet to keep her company. Through an apparent coincidence, a stray Golden Retriever puppy appears in the garden of Akari's house. Akari quickly adopts her, and names it "Socks" because of its distinctive white paws. Akari's mother makes her promise to always keep "The Ten Commandments of Dog Ownership". The mother dies months later, and Akari finds out that the puppy was actually a gift from her mother. Shortly after, Akari's father accepts a new job at a Sapporo-based university and Akari has to move with him to a dormitory. Because the dormitory does not allow pets, Akari is forced to entrust Socks to the care of a friend for a while. Feeling guilty for always neglecting his daughter, Akari's father decides to quit his new job and to open a home-based clinic in Hakodate instead. Akari reclaims her pet. A decade later, Akari is a hard-working university student, studying to become a veterinarian. She starts bemoaning the sacrifices required to take care of an aging dog. Following her graduation, Akari gets hired as a zookeeper and rarely visits her own home. She neglects Socks, who grows old and feeble. Though worried about her pet's health, Akari is too busy with her work to take care of it or to keep it company. Her father alerts her in time to at least visit Sock when the dog is on its deathbed. After Socks' death, Akari reads a letter from her mother concerning the purpose of her gift. Realizing that she has neglected everyone in her life in favor of her work, Akari decides to attempt to make a new start. She reconnects with her former best friend Susumu and marries him.