Mon 19th Sept: Maya

Mondays are (almost) always the day I take puppies to the vet for vaccinations, and stop by the AFCD kennels at Pokfulam on the way.  Every time I go there I silently pray (to whichever god that will listen) that there will be no new puppies, and today at least my prayers were answered.  I have a full contingent of puppies of all ages now, and until I home a good few of them I really can’t take any more.

Maya tried to get out every time she saw a Chinese person passing

Of course no puppies doesn’t mean that I escape without at least one heartbreaker, and today it was a young dog that had been surrendered to AFCD when her owners left Hong Kong (or at least that was the story, but who knows what the truth is).  This girl had actually arrived a couple of weeks ago but had been too scared for me to approach at the time, so I waited until she had calmed down a bit.  Dog owners really should be made to see and understand what terror their pets experience when they are left at AFCD, and the awful thing is that the more loved and cared for the dog has been, the worse the experience.  I decided that today had to be the day I made a decision about this particular dog, and as I enetered her kennel she showed all the classic submissive signs, including involuntary peeing and lip-licking.  Recognising her body language  as indications that she wasn’t going to bite,  it was easy for me to clip a leash on but she was still too scared to walk out of her space without a lot of gentle encouragement.  From that moment, when she realised she was out and free, there was such a huge change in her.  Her tail went up, and she was pulling at the leash to get out of the main gates and away from the horrors and fear of the past couple of weeks.  I was told her name was Maya, so she’ll stay as that, and I am so happy that I chose to take her as she is an incredibly sweet dog.  The sad thing is that when we were at Acorn having her checked over and vaccinated, she was desperately looking out of the windows at every (Chinese) person who passed, wondering if her family were coming to get her.   I can tell she has been loved, so how could she be left behind to die like that?  I hope she doesn’t have to wait too long for a new family who will love her – for ever.

After what has seemed like a relatively tick-free summer, the horrible little creatures seem to be making up for lost time, and despite  regular applications of Frontline I still seem to be spending a lot of time picking the monsters off  puppies.  I have also been hearing about a lot of tick fever cases recently, so please do take special care to give your dogs the once-over when they have been outside, especially in grassy areas.  No tick prevention is 100 percent effective, so a manual check’n'pick is really essential.