Mon 7th Jan: Free at last!

Cora Long-legs was adopted on Sunday

In all the upheaval surrounding the arrival of the pugs, poodle and puppies on Sunday, I forgot to mention the happy adoption of another ex-breeder dog from the Ap Lei Chau Homing Centre, one of the most recent intake from AFCD Sheung Shui.  She's supposed to be a Jack Russell but her legs are long, and she's very timid like so many of these dogs that have had no experience of a world outside their cage.  It's just one of the reasons why we ask all HKDR adopters not to use cages and instead put up a baby gate if confining is necessary.  If you went to a zoo and saw the animals being kept in small cages, what would you think?  You'd be appalled and quite rightly so, so why is keeping a dog in a cage any different or better?  We use travel crates for exactly that purpose, getting the dogs from A to B, but other than that they are as free as possible, just separated at feeding time if necessary.

Travel crates are for travel

For the first night the pugs were in a separate room but now are with the other dogs

Watching the pugs running so happily around the Homing Centre after coming back from Acorn was a great feeling, and I wondered what was going on inside their heads.  Freedom! Can you imagine how happy they are? Only the poor girl who had to have an eye removed stayed behind in hospital for the night, but she'll be up and about by Tuesday.  However, as we know from previous dogs and puppies taken in by Catherine's Puppies from this terrible breeder, just about all of the dogs either have tick fever or are at risk of developing the disease, so we left the clinic with a very large bag of (very expensive) Liquid Gold (Atovaquone).

There have already been quite a lot of enquiries about these pug girls, so I do need to remind all potential adopters that ex-breeder dogs who have spent their whole lives in small cages are not toilet trained, and it may take some time to teach them new behaviour.  Patience, understanding, and having the time available to be there to oversee them is vital, and home-alone situations just don't work.  The other thing that never works when training any dog, old or young, is punishment, and we only use positive reinforcement at all times.  It's frustrating at times and tempting to lose your temper, but a dog doesn't understand the concept of being "bad" or naughty, so can't connect punishment with the crime as perceived by the human.  Praise and reward for getting it right works every time, and it builds a relationship or trust, not fear, between dog and human.