Fri 22nd July: Volunteers urgently needed at Tai Po

I was back at AFCD for the last day of the working week and left with a couple of puppies and a little poodle girl who had been abandoned outside the gates of the Animal Management Centre.  As she had no identifying microchip it meant I could take her immediately, which I did of course, and she is now called Tosca and I don't think she'll be with us for more than a day.  She's young, very cute, sweet and playful, and she has an interview lined up for first thing on Saturday.   Even if she's not adopted by the family who are coming to meet her I know she will have a lot of other offers.

All of these puppies have now been adopted

I wish I could be as sure about homes for the puppies as I am for Tosca, because even though they're very lovely it's the worst time of the year for adoptions.  Still, two lucky foster brothers, Mars and Milo, found homes together and that was before I had even met them.  They came from AFCD in Sheung Shui with tick fever, like their siblings, and went straight to foster where they have stayed until now.  Because they were being treated they couldn't come to the Whiskers N Paws Sunday puppy afternoons and now they have moved to their new forever home, and that is the file closed on that particular litter.

Celia is back at Tai Po hoping for a second chance

We haven't been having much luck at Tai Po either, with two dogs coming back from their trial homes when the already-resident dogs didn't approve.   Sometimes its works and sometimes it doesn't, and that's just life.  The few volunteers and staff up at the huge Homing Centre are also feeling the heat in more than the obvious way as we are short of cleaners and paid kennel staff for one reason or another, and that means double the work for anyone who is on site.  If any registered volunteers have the time to help out in any way during the week, please just go whenever you are able to.  Taking care of six hundred dogs is a huge undertaking and with even one cleaner off sick it makes a huge difference.

I seem to have had a running catalogue of dog disasters on Lamma recently, and after talking to Dr Tony about Hilton's hind leg paralysis today I'm not optimistic that he will get better.  An MRI scan has been booked but it's really more for my own benefit than Hilton's so that I can be absolutely sure that there's nothing that can be done.  The fact that Hilton can't stand at all and has to drag himself around by his two front legs means that he is also incontinent, or at least unable to stand to pee or poo, and that's not fair on him or the other dogs who share his living space.  It happened so suddenly that I haven't been able to accept the inevitable yet, and am clinging to any ray of hope that a miracle can save him.  Right now all I can do is hold him, and at least he enjoys that small comfort.