Thurs 28th April: Kennedy Town, and Tizzy

 It's time to reveal the location and address of the new Kennedy Town Homing Centre, which will be where the smaller dogs and young puppies will be staying.   It's not fully completed yet but it's pretty much ready to start moving in the temporary residents of the "Red Dog" Centre in Ap Lei Chau, meaning the puppies and a couple of the non-"Red" dogs.   Access to the entrance of the KTHC (Kennedy Town Homing Centre) is via a small lane which you can actually approach from either end, although the entrance is much clearer and cleaner coming from the Praya direction. 

Sai Hong Lane from the Praya entry

For the time being we will continue to have the Red Dog Centre at 21 Main Street Ap Lei Chau, as these dogs will eventually be moving to the second Kennedy Town location which won't be ready for some time yet.

Since we knew we would have to be leaving the previous Ap Lei Chau Homing Centre, we have relied almost entirely on foster homes to accommodate the many dogs and puppies that had nowhere else to stay.  In a way we were lucky that lack of travel combined with working from home for so many meant we were able to find enough temporary homes, but now things are moving back to some sort of normality it's just as well that at least one of the new centres can take back some of the dogs.

Plum is a (small) medium size

Others are going to be more tricky because they were the ones who stayed upstairs at Wai Fung Street, and while most of these dogs moved to Lamma at the end of February, others like Plum went to foster care. Plum is a shy girl, who like all other timid dogs really needs to have another dog companion in the home.  She has plenty of friends in her foster home and has blossomed during her time there, so we really want her to have a forever home now.   The alternative will be that she will move to Lamma, and while that's more suitable for her than staying at the Kennedy Town Homing Centre, it still seems a shame.  Plum's foster says "She walks like a dream and enjoys our walks and hikes with the pack, exploring new smells along the trail....". 

We're very grateful to all of the foster parents who stepped in to help when we were so much in need, and while everyone has done an amazing job in raising puppies or helping shy dogs like Plum to learn about life as a family member, there's one particular foster couple who I'd like to mention specifically.   

Tizzy loved tennis balls

At a time when we were taking in a lot of small dogs at the same time, sometimes in groups of twenty or so, one of the dogs was a one year-old French bulldog I called Tizzy.  Tizzy had a horrible skin condition on her back legs, with open wounds that looked like giant ulcers.  Unfortunately there were two separate causes, one being MRSA (antibiotic-resistant bacterial infection) and the other a cancerous tumour.   I was advised that there was no treatment for the cancer, although at least the infection responded to one of the stronger antibiotics.   Despite everything, Tizzy was offered a foster home for as long as needed, which we assumed would be a matter of months.  After a very short time the foster parents asked if we would approve them trying chemotherapy for Tizzy, which they would pay for, and of course I agreed.   Everyone was aware that this was not a cure, rather a temporary solution, and while Tizzy responded fantastically to the chemotherapy and the tumour all but disappeared, eventually it came back,  and today Tizzy's fosters said goodbye to the little dog they had loved and done so much for.   

I can't say how grateful we all are for the extra time that Tizzy was able to enjoy as a "healthy" and funny young dog, living life to the full and having the best of everything.  As it happens, the couple are going to be leaving Hong Kong very soon, and I was already wondering how we would be able to find Tizzy another foster home knowing that the cancer would return before too long.  I think that Tizzy knew, and she chose to give the same back to her foster parents that they had given to her.