Sat 16th June: Rain is a 4-letter word
Rain just about sums up today. There was no escaping it, and although my Lamma dogs can at least stay inside and keep dry, they get very bored and irritable – and so do I. The heavy duty tarpaulin-type “blinds” that I recently had made to enclose the porch also turned out to be useless in the wind, and even with heavy poles in the bottom to try and keep them down they were flapping (dangerously). When I got up this morning I found they’d flipped themselves up onto the first floor balcony, having shed their shed their poles and broken free of all ties. So it’s back to the drawing board on that one.
You’d think in a place like Hong Kong, where rain is very much a part of summer, that it would be business as usual but it’s not true. I still got online enquiries about dogs, and in particular the two shih tzus that I posted on yesterday’s blog, but there were no actual adoptions. There was a flurry of excitement in the morning when Mr Magoo slipped his collar as he was being put into the van at his foster home on the Peak. In fact he was having to be returned to Tai Po because he was constantly trying to escape, and had previously jumped the garden fence and slipped his collar, luckily being found almost immediately. I feel incredibly sorry for Magoo, a very sweet dog who was caught by AFCD a couple of years ago and ‘adopted’ by me from their Pokfulam Kennels. He was the dog that pulled out of his collar and disappeared into the valley as soon as the gate to the Animal Management Centre was opened, and as I later discovered he was living free at the nearby Wah Fu Estate. He wasn’t any trouble and nobody objected to him being there, in fact he was only reported to AFCD during the last period of heavy rain because someone felt sorry for him. The fact is, Magoo liked his “home” and his freedom and that’s how he wants to live and where he wants to be. When I heard that he had run away I was happy that it had happened on the Peak and not the New Territories somewhere, because I was sure he could find his way back to Wah Fu. However, luckily for us (but perhaps unluckily for Magoo) he doesn’t run very fast and he was once again found and returned to his temporary home. A dog like that will eventually settle in a home, as we have found before, but it takes time. A home with a garden would be nice, but it would have to have a very high fence. If anyone can give Magoo a place where he can settle into domesticity, please give him a chance. He’s a gentle boy and really sweet, and he won’t ask for much.
Mr Magoo is a lovely boy. Can anyone give him a home?
Following the death of one of my puppies (Kota) from acute parvovirus, I’ve been watching the rest of her group for any signs of the disease but they are absolutely fine. It’s strange how deadly this virus can be, yet within a litter there will always be some that aren’t affected while others die around them. There’s no way of predicting who the unlucky ones will be either, because it’s often the most healthy-looking ones (and inevitably the prettiest). Now the remaining four at my house can try their luck at Whiskers’n'Paws again, including Trinidad with the broken leg. Although she’s still wearing a bright blue bandage covering a splint, the bones have already pretty much healed and she can run around as well as all of the others. It’s incredible how fast a young puppy’s bones can repair themselves, and luckily the fracture in Trinidad’s leg was in a place that won’t affect her growth.
