Thurs 28th April: AFCD is never an acceptable solution

Little Mikey turned out to be a very sweet boy

It was a great feeling recently when I took the last puppy out of AFCD in Pokfulam and left a totally empty kennel block, laughingly telling the staff they could all go on holiday now.  I knew it would be a short-lived moment of happiness, as did they, and sure enough there were a lot of newcomers when I went today, only meaning to have a further two Lamma dogs' licenses updated.  All of the dogs now occupying the recently vacated spaces had been surrendered, including a traumatised chihuahua who I was warned to approach carefully, but who turned out to be a sweet little dog who was simply terrified.

Two of the other dogs were very friendly adults, with a third being a six or seven-months old puppy.  Fearing that this was an ex-HKDR puppy, I asked if that was the case and was told no, it was adopted from another organisation.  Fast forward to the evening when I was working at my computer once again, and I received an anguished message from a friend telling me that a puppy who was a regular playmate of her own dog had been taken to AFCD, and I recognised it as the same one I had seen earlier.  It had apparently chewed some stuff up, books or something, and was too full-on to handle.

The thing is, I don't care what a puppy or dog has done, if it is yours and you are responsible for it then you don't, under any circumstances, solve your problem by surrendering it to AFCD to be killed (because that is on the form that you sign).  The worst possible scenario is if you have a dog that becomes aggressive and repeatedly bites (and that doesn't apply to a puppy), and in that situation and if there is no alternative to having the dog put to sleep, you take it to the vet yourself and hold the dog in your arms while it is being injected with the fatal solution.  There is never any justification to hand your problem over to AFCD. Never.

As for the other friendly dogs whose owners had also taken the coward's way out, one came from public housing where dogs aren't allowed and the other, who rolled on its back in fear-submission and wiggled her legs in the air, had another unacceptable excuse which I can't even remember because it honestly wasn't worth the brain space.  I think it was that they had no time to take care of it but in any case it was nothing to do with any behaviour issues.

The dog inside this buggy prison is a beagle

As an update on the muzzled-dog-in-a-buggy story, it seems it's a beagle but I'm waiting to hear more from AFCD about the current situation.