Thurs 4th Oct: Learning new behaviour

I had a chance to take some of the current, and now no longer baby puppies to the Ap Lei Chau dog park when an old vet friend from our Pokfulam days visited.  Of course I've seen the fun the puppies have at Whiskers N Paws on Sundays, but rarely take dogs to the park which is very close to our Homing Centre, and naturally they had a blast chasing each other non-stop for the entire time.

Poodle Amigo and small dog Sparky were included in the puppy party

The same group went out again later in the day with a group of volunteers celebrating a birthday, and you can see one poodle with them, Amigo.  This photo was taken just before Amigo left for a trial adoption, and having seen how sweet and gentle he was earlier in the day I can't see any reason why he would need to come back.

Two more dogs were taken for a trial adoption together, this time from Tai Po and they are co-fuzzies Ozzy and Oona.  They were strays originally, and were caught as part of a TNR (Trap, Neuter and Return) exercise, but as they were so lovely they were brought to us rather than being released back to where they came from.   They will need to adjust once again to a new kind of life, so I hope they will quickly realise how lucky they are.

Oona and Ozzie may take time to adjust

Of all the dogs that ended up living with me on Lamma, most were puppies that were never chosen but a few were dogs with behaviour issues that meant they weren't ever going to be candidates for adoption. The worst case was that of Bones, who was given the name because when I took him from AFCD he was so thin he was like a skeleton.  He looked like a mini German Shepherd, and may have been so small because of starvation, as we have seen many small young adults grow to a normal size once they are properly fed.  We assumed his abnormal, and quite extreme, behaviour was due to early mistreatment, including starvation, but he was a tail chewer to such an extent that his lovely long tail had to be amputated because of self-mutilation.  He was angry and anti-social, biting both other dogs and sometimes people too.  He was moved from Tai Po to Ap Lei Chau to see if more one-on-one attention would help, but in the end he had to come to Lamma.

Bones when he arrived from AFCD

I have the same way of "training" all dogs and that is to let them sort things out for themselves, and with Bones it took a while.  He had to figure out which group of dogs he wanted to join, and how to share food without fighting.  He learned that being aggressive would only end with him losing the fight, and slowly but surely he changed.  I had re-named him Jones rather than Bones when he started to gain weight, and he became incredibly affectionate towards me, begging for attention and showering me with kisses when he could.  He found dog friends that would agree to play with him, and became one of my very large family.  He will never be suitable for re-homing but I can certainly count him as a success story, and if it's possible with a dog like Jones I really believe every dog can change given time and patience.  I am vehemently against using drugs of any kind and have never needed to resort to the "chemical cosh" that some behaviourists prescribe as almost a first option.

Given my experience with dogs like Jones, I think Ozzy and Oona will be fine.