Thurs 8th July: A surprise delivery

4 new puppies

Although we were expecting the arrival of the lovely female dog from the North West New Territories that I wrote about in the past two blogs, it was a surprise when two adults and four puppies were delivered to the Tai Po Homing Centre at the same time.  It turned out that one of these adults I'd been told about while the other plus the pups were last minute additions.  Once the mystery of how they ended up with us had been solved, all six were transferred to Ap Lei Chau, as the two adults are medium sized and more suitable for the smaller Homing Centre.  We'd been told that one of the dogs was the mother of the pups but that turned out not to be the case, and that was confirmed by vet Dr Denise at ALCVC when she had a look at them all.  She also agreed that the adults were young, one or two years old.  They're now Lupa and Kiku and I'll have photos to share in tomorrow's post. 

Incidentally, coming from the same source as the six new arrivals, we're expecting a young male labrador on Friday, but we'll need to wait to see if he turns up and if he is indeed a labrador or a lookalike.

Malcolm's big day arrived

One event that did happen as promised was the adoption of almost-German shepherd Malcolm, and I think he's going to love his new home and environment.

I was reminded of a brilliant and very easy way to donate to HKDR when we received the monthly notice of funds that had been transferred to our bank account by Coin Dragon.  I wrote about this before of course, but in case you'd also forgotten you can "feed" the Coin Dragon with your loose change and choose to have the amount donated.  I'm sure most people have lots of coins sitting around that they don't want to carry in their pockets or purses, and there are Coin Dragons all over the place now that will happily eat them all.  For all details and locations visit the Coin Dragon Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/coindragonHK

Lone survivor Billy Bob

 We have several baby puppies in foster homes, with Billy Bob the lone survivor of his litter, and Beryl with her sister Bessie in another home.  Sadly it seems Beryl must have inhaled some of the rain water as the litter were washed out of their hillside home and she has aspiration pneumonia.  She's still being cared for by her foster parents but if she doesn't improve she'll have to go into hospital, something that we really try to avoid for very young babies. 

Unfortunately, but inevitably, mother dog Lorna's five puppies will probably not survive after she died of distemper virus, and one has already succumbed to the disease.  We were incredibly lucky to have foster homes for these babies, as there was always a high probability that they would be infected with the same terrible killer disease.  However where's there's still life there's always hope, and maybe the remaining four, or at least some of them, will make it through. 

I have been hearing that there are multiple cases of distemper and/or parvovirus turning up in many pet shop and breeder puppies, and while those I know about were in Sai Kung (and also our own case with border collie baby Rupert), it's highly likely that there are many more we don't know about.  The worst thing about such infectious diseases isn't just the way they affect the individual dog or puppy, but that the virus can be incubating without any visible symptoms.  So you can buy what seems to be a healthy puppy, and a couple of days later you find you have a very sick one instead. By that time the virus could have been unwittingly spread to others, with tragic results. 

With the weekend coming we have two adoption events, one on Saturday for older puppies, and of course our regular Whiskers N Paws party one Sunday, 2pm to 4pm. * If you are planning to adopt any HKDR dog or puppy, please complete the Adoption Questionnaire on our website before coming to the event: https://hongkongdogrescue.com/adopt/adoption-questionnaire/

Donut, Ziti, Louie and Lemon are very sweet older puppies who are waiting for homes at HKDR Tai Po Homing Centre!

They will also be going to our *𝑴𝒐𝒏𝒈𝒓𝒆𝒍 𝑨𝒅𝒐𝒑𝒕𝒊𝒐𝒏 𝑫𝒂𝒚*! this coming Saturday at PRIVATE i PETS which is for larger mongrels (aka mixed breeds).

Date: 10 July 2021 (Sat)

Time: 2pm - 4pm

Venue: PRIVATE i PETS - 1/F, 10 Cleveland Street, Causeway Bay (Gloucester Road Main Entrance)