Sat 11th Feb: A possible holiday in 2025

Rosie will revert to being Shadow again

We already knew that Rosie, ex-Rosalie-then-Shadow, was going to be going to her new home today as her adopters had already been to see her and had arranged pick up for the weekend.  It was an easy meeting as the family already knew Rosie well having been the neighbours of her previous home where their two dogs and Rosie played together every day.  When they heard that Rosie had been given back to us they had no hesitation in offering her a place in their own home, exchanging the role of neighbours with Rosie's now-ex family.

Farewell photo of Coolio and Rosie

We also know that Coolio will be leaving on Sunday, so this photo that Cactus took of the two of them in the dog park was their farewell-and-be-happy one.

Only a couple of these early dogs are still with me 

As I wrote yesterday I had to take Ginny back to Acorn for emergency exploratory surgery as a last chance to save her, but it turned out that she had liver cancer which explained her dramatic weight loss, total disinterest in any food and resulting weakness.  But dogs being what they are, Ginny was determined to come on the morning walk despite being barely able to put one foot in front of the other and I had to force her to wait for me at home. I think we both knew that the taxi ride to Acorn would be our last moments together, and she lay on my lap with her head on my shoulder and her face pressed against mine the whole way.

Curly is still with me and 13 years old now

When I first started bringing dogs back to Lamma, before we had the Pokfulam Kennels and they all went there instead, I had worked out that by the time I was seventy they would all have died and I would be free of the responsibility of having to take care of so many and could have a private life again.  Well that time has almost come and there are only a handful of the original dogs left, but when we had to leave Pokfulam and move to Tai Po I began bringing all of the puppies to Lamma so they could go to Whiskers N Paws on Sundays.  That was in 2010 and it must have been a bad year for puppy adoptions (and also for kennel cough I recall) because I ended up with a large number of dogs from that time that had failed to find homes as youngsters.  So now I have had to revise my early calculations based on a dog's life expectancy of up to fifteen years, and I now anticipate 2025 as being the time when I can take a holiday.