Thurs 10th May: More lucky dogs

Honey, the smaller dog on the left, looks quite comfortable next to her new family

I was so happy to get the email from Honey’s new family, with attached photo, telling me that Honey had settled in with the two resident dogs and would be staying.  Honey is such a wonderful girl and she should really have been adopted a long time ago, but life is strange like that.  There is just no way of knowing which dogs will be chosen, and quite often it’s one that you would never have imagined would stand out from the crowd and catch the right person’s eye.

Roma has a lovely (human) bed to sleep on now!

Roma is another lucky girl whose adoption was confirmed today.  She spent some time in AFCD as a microchipped dog waiting for her registered owner to be traced.  As if often the case, and even with dogs whose owners would never dream of giving them up, notifying AFCD of a change of address or other details is something that just doesn’t occur to most people.  If you look on the back of your dog license (which should be renewed every three years) there’s a box for change of contact details, so please let AFCD know if you have moved or have a new phone number.

Nobody knows anything about this dachshund girl

In many cases of dogs that are already microchipped and licensed, the owner has changed so many times that nobody can even remember who it was.  It’s frightening the number of surrender requests we get where the current owner doesn’t even know how old the dog is because they were just given it by a friend who got it from another friend and so on.  One such case is a dachshund who will be coming to us soon.  The surrender form had no information about anything because the person who currently has the poor dog has no idea.  That also causes problem for us when it comes to trying to update the license and to change the registered owner details because it may take weeks for that mystery person to be traced, or not.  During that period we can apply for a Temporary Keeper’s License, which at least means we can get the dog rabies vaccinated.  It’s a complicated system which at least I’m now familiar with, but for most members of the public – and even many vets and clinics – they don’t know what can be done in these types of situations.  Today I was able to change shih tzu Paulie’s status from temporary to officially owned, so he is now legally mine.  He has a very smart new haircut to go with his updated status and he’s a very proud and happy boy.

We haven't had time to get a proper photo of springer Flynn yet

As expected, the new springer spaniel has a home to go to, and a lovely one at that.  I’m quite relieved because he’s too big and active for our Ap lei Chau Centre, while really not being suitable for Tai Po.  These medium-sized dogs are always difficult to place, not really suiting either place.  We have Gobi at Tai Po but really he’s too small for there too, and he’s another dogs I would have thought would have been adopted a long time ago if for no other reason than he’s totally unique in looks.  He’s somewhere between a Chinese crested and a wire-haired terrier of sorts, with a long body covered with sparse hair and a Mohican crest on top of his head.  He’s a lovely boy, very easy, his only downfall being that he’s a cat chaser.

Funny sweet Gobi, really too small to be at Tai Po

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