Tues 14th Jan: All in a day's work

Sweet little schnauzer Schnitzel is really quite ill all of a sudden

I took a new puppy out of AFCD Pokfulam today, a happy little guy, healthy other than his flea passengers, and he's now staying at our Ap Lei Chau Homing Centre with the assorted smaller-sized residents and other puppies. 


As always we went straight from AFCD to Acorn for the standard check-up and vaccination, and I also had recent arrival Schnitzel with me as he'd stopped eating and we needed to know what was wrong.  When he first came to us his teeth were rotten and his gums badly infected, but he'd had all of the teeth removed and his gums had healed well so that wasn't the reason.   Due to his age and unknown history we'd had a full blood test done when he'd first come to us and there was nothing remarkable about it, but running the same tests today it showed Schnitzel had renal failure and was really quite sick.   I don't know how a dog goes from being pretty much OK to being close to death in such a short time, but of course Schnitzel had to stay behind in hospital while I took new puppy Thomas back to Ap Lei Chau.

The pug 

What happened next is best described by Catherine of Catherine's Puppies in her Facebook post https://www.facebook.com/catherinespuppies/posts/2898309086887423?__tn__=K-R so after I had agreed to take in whatever was needed there were multiple messages going back and forth about who/what would be coming to us and which dogs needed to stay in hospital in Sai Kung.  In the end the bichon mother with her newborn baby (one had already died) needed hospitalisation, as well as the starved large-sized puppy, while the pug, a poodle/chihuahua cross type and six little pups were brought to Ap Lei Chau by Kaz O'Caroll https://www.facebook.com/freedomrideshk/.

Poodle/chihauhua cross? 

6 new puppies need names!

While waiting for the new arrivals one of the previous Freedom Rides dogs was leaving the Homing Centre.  Midge can start her new life afresh, and make space for the others who now need help.

Midge starts her new life today 

Just as an additional funny story, while all of this was going on I'd already gone back to Lamma and was helping a neighbour remove a rat snake from one of the houses, or at least that was the plan.  It started with the discovery in the house of a very large shedded skin, indicating the snake must also be inside, and the subsequent finding of the actual snake curled up under a sofa.  However by the time I arrived to help move the slumbering snake from his cosy winter hibernation spot it had disappeared and was nowhere to be found.  It will turn up one day and surprise someone.

The only thing worse than finding a snake, is finding it gone