Sat 11th Feb: Labrador Land

How absolutely infuriating!  I had just finished writing today’s entry and was adding some photos when the whole thing disappeared.  If it’s hiding I’m not computer savvy enough to find it and won’t even try.  So with a lot less time and even less enthusiasm, I’ll start again.

It was my second afternoon at Pacific Pets in Stanley with a bunch of puppies, all hoping for a home.  Thanks to a couple of very helpful volunteers who walked the streets with leaflets (and a puppy), it was quite a busy three hours but one thing I quickly found out is that Stanley could be re-named the Land of the Labrador.

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Everyone has one.  OK, that’s not entirely true and I even met ex-Pasta, one of our ex-HKDR puppies, now around eight months old as still as super-friendly as he was when he was a baby.  I was really happy to hear that he and the six year-old in the family are inseparable and that although it was one of the other children who really wanted a puppy, the boy and the dog “found each other”.

I had written (in my lost draft) about the call I got regarding a Sheltie someone had witnessed being beaten (and had tried to intervene), and my own need for patience at trying times (every night), but I’ll cut it short and just go straight to the concluding sentence.  What I said was that the last thing you should do when you catch a runaway dog is to punish it, at least if you ever want the dog to willingly come to you again.  The dog will just connect coming back to you with being punished.  Simple, isn’t it?

I don’t have any update today about puppy Seal but this is from George’s foster today (George is the dog I found at the edge of the sea at the point of drowning, and who turned out to have terrible injuries inside his mouth):

“Just to provide you with an update on George.

He is one funny boy; very clever (as he has learnt to come when called and sit), very agile (found him one morning laying down quite nicely on our dining table), sweet as he now allows me and my helper to touch, stroke and pat him. For other people, such as my son and his friends, he will cautiously approach them, but will only allow them to pat his body, not quite his head yet. It is very easy to put the leash on him when walking now, but his walks are still slow and again, cautious. He doesn’t like to be away from the house, and always looking back and wanting to go home. He LOVES his food, and I feed him 3 smallish meals a day.”

George is still waiting for a permanent home.

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