Mon 12th July: Arrivals and imminent departures

 

This surrendered girl is now Poppy

As usual we welcomed more new dogs to our Tai Po Homing Centre today, although the welcome is only really how we try to make the dogs themselves feel rather than how we see it.  The dogs aren't coming because they have any say in the matter, they're simply the victims of circumstance and we rarely know what those circumstances are.  One dog, now called Poppy, was a direct surrender so we have some basic information at least, but the other dog that came from AFCD Pokfulam is a complete mystery.  He had no license so I estimated his age at a year by checking his teeth, so you can at least have an idea of his sweet temperament by the fact that despite being very scared he licked my hand as I lifted his lip. 

Griffin's perfect teeth would fool me

Accurately assessing an adult dogs age is actually very difficult because some dogs have very clean teeth even when older (my Lamma dog Griffin is almost ten years old and has perfect white teeth), while smaller dogs can have heavy tartar even at a very young age.  The body condition also has to be taken into consideration, looking at things like scars or marks, elbows and so on, and this new boy had all the indications of being quite young.  His new name is Timmy.

The 5 puppy girls at their rescuer's home

The five (all female) puppies I mentioned in yesterday's post also arrived, and luckily went straight out to foster homes (thank you).  They're not very young babies which is good in the sense that they don't need to be bottle-fed or have the intensive care that newborns need, but the downside of this is that being born wild they are already scared of humans.  Hopefully they will overcome this by being in homes and being handled, but this behaviour is essential for survival for dogs in the wild and is instilled in puppies from birth.  Even really young puppies will know to stay quiet when there is danger around, which is exactly what these new puppies did when they were waiting to be collected by their foster parents.  Usually in a litter like this some puppies will open up and become friendly, while there may be one or two that will always be timid. 

Now for some good news, Tai Po puppy Lemon was chosen today and will go home soon, while another in-and-out dog, a young labrador boy, also had his adoption confirmed for after his vet visit.  I didn't mention his arrival at the weekend, although I did write that he may be coming, because we had an adopter waiting and I just needed to know that this would be going ahead. Photos of both adoptions will be shared when the dogs leave the Homing Centre for the last time.