Mon 16th Jan: A happy day

 I love it when I can write about adoptions, even if I almost have to chip the ice off the keyboard to type anything.  I'd just put away the heaters as they were taking up too much space and I wasn't using them, so it's probably my fault that the temperature plummeted and it's now as cold as I can ever remember it being.  If I haul the heaters back out again I know it will turn warm, so for now I'm just wearing a lot of clothes. 

Mother and daughter stay together

Soybean leaving Elgin Street

To start with the adoptions, Soybean was picked up from HKDR@Elgin after a weekend meeting. 

Also the mother-and-daughter pair of poodles, Miffy and Muffin, were adopted together, just as we'd been wanting (hooray!).

Hunter was chosen from Kennedy Town

There was another double adoption too, but one half of this pair was puppy Hunter from Kennedy Town, while the other was doglet Liam from Tai Po.  There are already other ex-HKDR dogs in this lovely home so we know for sure that everything is going to be fine.

Same home for Liam as for Hunter

I say that because as much as we try to explain the inevitability of a dog or puppy needing time to settle into a new home and environment,  adopters panic about the fact that a dog doesn't seem to be happy or relaxed, and that it won't eat, drink or relieve itself.  Our trainer Cactus also gets many questions about puppies and their biting, when this is not only normal, it's to be expected, and it's even included in our adoption questionnaire.  Baby puppies have very sharp teeth and they use them on everything, including humans and furniture.  You can certainly moderate this behaviour through positive training, but you can't expect that it will never happen.  The best thing about puppies is that they grown very fast and learn quickly (assuming you're teaching them correctly), and this stage soon becomes a faint memory.

Yesterday I mentioned the two dogs that had been left at a groomers by their respective owners, one a shiba inu and the other a Malinois, aka Belgian shepherd, and after posting the shiba's photo and very basic details (since we haven't even seen him) we received quite a few adoption enquiries.  It's possible that by the time you read this post the shiba will have come and gone, leaving only the female Malinois needing a home.  We're told she's only ten months old, but again we haven't seen her yet.  This is a special breed of dog, used by the police and armed forces for all sorts of tasks due to their high intelligence and incredible stamina.   These are not dogs that should be considered as apartment pets unless you can provide hours of exercise and mental stimulation, combined with proper training.