Thurs 2nd April: A dog without a name

To the person who surrendered his dog to AFCD in Pokfulam I have this to say:

A dog without a name

You could at least have gone directly to a rescue group so they (we) would have known the name of your dog and had all of the health records.  We would have known your dog's favourite things and what he liked to eat, if he had been around children and how he behaved with other dogs.  Instead you chose to leave him in a government facility, wondering what had happened and why he was there, and most of all when you would be coming back to take him home.

You didn't have the moral backbone or the courage to do the right thing and you chose the sneaky coward's way out.  I hope you're thinking about your dog now and how he is, but you lost your right to know anything.

Maybe someone else will know this dog and be able to give us some information.  We know his age and that he's incorrectly licensed as a labrador, probably sold as a pet shop puppy to someone ignorant enough not to know the difference.

While I was picking this dog up at AFCD I was unfortunate enough to be there at the same time as a breeder/pet shop worker was there with tiny cages full of older puppies.  They looked like leftover stock the pet shop or breeder had been unable to sell, and I hope their business has been badly affected by the current coronavirus, one of the positive things to come out of it.

Our HKDR trainer, Cactus, posted this video on Facebook yesterday following my blog about typical shiba inu behaviour and Gumbo's food guarding when he first came to us:  https://www.facebook.com/cactusndogs/videos/670661293685679/ A lot of food guarding stems from underfeeding puppies, as recommended by pet shops, while we tell adopters to do the opposite.  When food is scarce then of course it becomes something so precious that it needs to be guarded.  I can't stress enough how vital the early puppy months are in shaping a dog's behaviour for life, even if personality is something a puppy is born with. 

You can meet sweet Casper at the Homing Centre this weekend

At HKDR we provide all of our Homing Centre puppies and puppy fosters with as much food as needed, so the puppies don't grow up seeing food as something so special they need to fight for it.

Bailey has been in a wonderful foster home since the day he came to us

Talking of puppies, we won't be able to hold a Sunday puppy afternoon for obvious reasons but we do have puppies available to meet and adopt, and they have all had the benefit of being in foster homes where they have become used to being part of a family.