Tues 22nd May: Buddha's Birthday

Dogs really do have memories of events and people that have affected them, and sometimes they are good memories but often not.  Some puppies that I have barely known as babies before they were adopted still greet me like a long-lost mother when we meet again at Whiskers N Paws, while some dogs retain negative associations and hate me.   I can understand it when whatever happened is obvious, but it can be so subtle that I really can't recall any incident that triggers the reaction.

I took this photo of a very scared Lara at the vet clinic where I picked her up from

Lara, for example, was adopted from HKDR as a baby puppy and subsequently abandoned on the street when she was about seven months old.  Luckily she was spotted hanging around  a rubbish bin looking for food and was taken to a vet clinic in Aberdeen where I went to pick her up.  She was really very scared at that point and refused to get out of the hospital cage, so I had to drag her out forcibly.  She has never forgotten or forgiven, and I'm sure she still associates me with her experience of being abandoned and everything that happened afterwards.  She doesn't like or trust me one bit, but I can understand and don't take it personally.

Blanco has lots of human friends but I'm not one of them

Another dog who really hates me is Blanco the poodle/bichon, but in his case I have no idea why.  I can't recall even having much to do with him let alone any incident that could have triggered his quite violent response to just seeing me, but it's there.  I have learned to stay out of his way.

Yogi as an older puppy at Ap Lei Chau

Some of you may recall I had to spend a few days in hospital a couple of years ago, and while I was unavailable to do my usual work one of the volunteers, with our then-driver Hing, took three puppies out of AFCD.  They turned out to be very scared puppies, born wild and what we refer to as "hillside dogs", those dogs who are so often seen and reported to me as lost pets.   We tried keeping the puppies at the Ap Lei Chau Homing Centre to see if they could become used to people, as many do, but their fear of humans was too deep-rooted so they now live on Lamma with me.  There was one boy in this litter who was such a cute and fluffy baby and he ended up being fostered by one of our volunteers.  He was called Yogi, and from a very young age this dog hated me with a vengeance.  I have to admit this is one case that I really don't understand no matter how hard I have tried to think back to any time that I could inadvertantly have scared or hurt him, but I wasn't even there to take him out of AFCD and pin him down to be microchipped.  So I will never know why Yogi holds a grudge, but whatever the reason he was adopted today by his foster parent and I really don't care if he hates me.

The point of these stories is to highlight how important it is that puppies are treated and trained with kindness, because they will never forget and it will shape their whole future.

Yogi is a very handsome adult now, and adopted!