Thurs 2nd Feb: Over 50 dogs/puppies homed in January

We homed just over fifty dogs and puppies in January!  There will always be good and not-so-good months for adoptions, and of course there are the disappointments of those who come back one way or another, but this is a very encouraging start to the year and hopefully an indication of numbers for the whole of 2012 and the Year of the Dragon. Don’t forget that starting from this Saturday there will be an additional regular puppy homing venue at Pacific Pets in Stanley (a few doors down from the Post Office), and I’ll be there from 2pm-5pm every Saturday afternoon with some of our youngsters looking for homes.

The Bunny Boys

We can add a chinchilla to the numbers too, and perhaps February’s total will include the three rabbits I took from AFCD today.  I was asked if I would take one rabbit but you know what they’re like (we talk of multiplying like rabbits) and when I looked in the crate there were actually three of them, and all really cute.  Two are flop-eared (males) and one looks like a teddybear (female), and of course they all went straight to Acorn for desexing.  There’s no way I will be taking these bunnies back to Lamma after the last disaster (when the dogs got into the bathroom where the rabbit was), so I hope they will have homes to go to by today (Friday).  When I got the first rabbit I had a lot of quick learning to do as I had no idea about what these animals need, and one thing I’m determined to ensure is that these new additions will not be kept in hutches.  If you think about rabbits in the wild (not that there are any in Hong Kong as far as I know) they live in burrows and hop around freely, so quite where this idea of stuffing them into small boxes to live out their miserable lives came from I’m not sure. Yes, they need a “burrow” to hide and sleep in but otherwise they should have space to run and play, and I’m looking for adopters who can offer this freedom.  (I also hate to see birds in cages).

Bunny Girl

As expected, when I went to take dachshund/beagle Queenie’s mate out of AFCD, she (it wasn’t the male I thought) was very different from the dog that was acting so protectively the first time round.  She was very sad and quite scared but not at all aggressive, so it was easy to get her out and chipped/licensed, although not quite as easy to get her into the van.  The poor dog weighs nearly twenty kilos and she’s only small.  How do people let their dogs get to this size?  Bess (new name) needs to lose half her bodyweight and then she’ll be like a dog re-born.  The diet and exercise regime starts as from now, and Queenie can join her.

At the other end of the scale (excuse the pun), there was  a surrendered one year-old schnauzer, now called Pizza, who although being quite tall weighed less than five kilos (four point six to be exact).  This is well underweight, and I’m guessing that the ex-owners believed the pet shop’s advice of only feeding a counted number of biscuits (kibble) every day.  So while Bess and Queenie will be doing circuits in the newly-opened dog park, Pizza will be eating bowls of food to fatten him up.  I’m told he was surrendered because the ex-owners couldn’t train him not to bark! Pul-eese, he’s a schnauzer, and that’s what schnauzers do.  If you don’t know that you have no business buying a schnauzer puppy in the first place.

Siblings String, Batty, Fritter and Bilko

I had to bring doglet Batty back to Lamma from Ap Lei Chau.  He’s a very good example of the myth that small dogs need less exercise than large ones, and the confines of our Homing Centre didn’t suit Batty at all. He quickly figured out that if he jumped over the fence in front of the glass door to the street (piece of cake), he could push the door open and escape.  Smart boy.  I discovered just how smart when I took him (and a few others) to the dog park for a runaround before getting on the sampan, and it took him seconds to work out that although the area has a fairly high fence surrounding it, if you jump onto the benches in front of the flower beds behind, there’s no fence at all.  It seems that Batty is rather more intelligent than the designer of the dog park, and I will have to let the Leisure and Cultural Department know before another Batty discovers the escape route.

To end his Ap Lei Chau days on a high note, as I was trying to close the van door after having put Batty on the back seat, he slipped out of the gap and sped off down the road.  Our neighbours, the (apparently best in Hong Kong) car washers, and Iris joined in as Batty ran this way and that, dodging every attempt to step on his leash, and it was clearly a game for him that he was enjoying because he didn’t run far, just zig-zagged back and forth until finally his luck ran out and he was caught.