Tues 7th Jan: Misha the husky

When I have to take my Lamma dogs to Acorn I'm never really sure what to expect.  They're all fine and happy living with me, but they have never experienced anything of real life in terms of people, traffic, boat and van journeys, or being handled by complete strangers.  Today's case was a dog called Melba who has a dry coat and balding end-of-tail and I needed him to have a thyroid function test.  As it turned out he was totally fine and compliant as he was checked over and had blood taken, even though none of us could work out how to open the crate door and ended up having to unscrew all the side fittings to separate top from bottom. I later found out there's a security button you have to press which unlocks the door catch.

Misha has no real knee joint 

This is a long way of saying I didn't do anything else as I had Melba with me and had to get him to Acorn and back.  However I did talk to Dr Tony about the new husky we took in on Monday, and what a mess she's in.  I know I don't have to tell you about breeders and how ruthless and uncaring they are, and Misha the husky is a prime example of inbreeding and using dogs that have genetic defects to produce puppies which carry the same genes.  Both of Misha's hips are dislocated, basically because there are no sockets to hold the "ball" of the femur in place, and one knee is also without any real "connector" meaning it can't flex and also can't be repaired through surgery.  We thought is was a previous break that was causing the stiff leg, and there is a badly repaired break which has resulted in a bend in the thigh bone (femur), but that's not the actual problem.  Dr Tony said it might be possible to do surgery on one hip (removing the femoral head) but that would put pressure on the worse leg and may result in neither functioning properly.  On his advice I opted to leave any surgery for now and to see if there's any pain, but poor Misha is always going to have mobility problems, and she's only a year old.   Thankfully she has gone to a foster home in case we have to go ahead with surgery.

Lucky Fred 

Happier news is that Fred was offered not one but three foster homes, so he'll be moving very soon and I don't have to worry about him.  Thank you to everyone who offered to take in the old boy, and hopefully it will mean other dogs being able to take advantage of the home vacancies.

We have new dogs arriving from AFCD, including three poodles, so as I always say if you don't find what you want on your first try, please keep checking back.  There are already so many lovely smaller-sized dogs staying at our Ap Lei Chau Homing Centre, and here's a lovely video of some of them at the dog park, thanks again to volunteer Harryn https://www.facebook.com/hkdogrescue/videos/614618319300126/