Fri 26th Feb: Goodbye to Kathy, hello to new puppies

 Today marked a kind of landmark as we said goodbye to our longest-serving staff member Kathy, who started as a volunteer back in our Pokfulam days and then became the person in charge of keeping all dog records, as well as many other duties.  As I told Kathy's replacement Eva Loo, or "Little Eva" to distinguish her from Eva Sit, only Kathy and myself go back to those early days and know all the history of HKDR and the dogs that date back the old Pokfulam Kennels.  

In fact Little Eva isn't a new staff member either as she has worked for us before, but it's the first time she's been introduced to the depths of the information and record-keeping that luckily we've been meticulous about from the start. 

We had a mini-gathering at the Ap Lei Chau Homing Centre to say goodbye (with delicious food from Whiskers N Paws cafe, which I can highly recommend) and the only person missing was Iris, who has taken a few days off.   It's a good opportunity to introduce our Ap Lei Chau staff to show the faces behind the names, so starting top left there's driver Ming, Eagle, me, Suet (Red Dog Centre manager), and Andrea.  Middle row from left: Eva Loo, Kathy, Ka Yan, Eva Sit, and the two in front are Zing and Yannie (holding puppy Berry).

Today's 3 puppies, all girls

I know it would happen, that as soon as one set of puppies arrived (with others on the way later), then AFCD would pop up with more, only three luckily.  We were expecting five today but only three arrived, and they're probably five to six weeks old, so not old enough for adoption as singletons but we won't need foster homes this time.  We need to save potential foster homes for the other puppies that are currently with their mother but which I said we'd take when they're three weeks old. 

Also coming from AFCD is a very large and young dog that looks like a Great Dane cross.  When I looked again at the photos once I was back home and could check them on a bigger screen than a phone, I could see that the ears have been crudely chopped off leaving strange-looking stumps.  It's bad enough that this is done to dogs like dobermans and Great Danes as a matter of course, and it's rightly illegal in many countries, but I can't imagine why anyone did this in such a terrible way. In fact in countries where docked tails are banned,  if you want to import dogs you have to prove that the tail or ears were already docked/cropped when they were adopted.   

I'm not allowed to share the photos that AFCD send to us, but if you're interested in adopting a very large, male, black, assumed Great Dane cross, estimated to be a year old, please complete the questionnaire at www.hongkongdogrescue.com/adopt/adoption-questionnaire/ as a first step.