Thurs 26th Aug: More dogs and donations

The 12 year-old lab at least has a foster home

 The senior chocolate labrador was dropped off at our Tai Po Homing Centre today, and thankfully there was a response to my plea for a foster home and the old boy will be moving out to his new family on Saturday. 

The handsome boat boy

Also continuing the never-ending stream of arrivals, we took in a new dog from the Pokfulam AFCD Animal Management Centre, a big and handsome boy who had been living on a fishing boat until being surrendered.  Almost all fishing boats have dogs on board, I assume as security guards, and I don't know why this particular one was given up but I'll try to find out. 

The poodle is around 6 years old

On Friday we'll have a further two dogs coming from AFCD Sheung Shui, one of them being the poodle I'd mentioned in a previous post, and the other an older puppy who'll go to the Tai Po Homing Centre.  AFCD staff told us the puppy's very friendly, as is almost always the case with these dogs.  Only the poodle is probably going to have to join the "Red" gang, meaning he has some behaviour issues, without doubt due to previous poor care and training.  

Poodles aren't born "bad", but their high intelligence and need for companionship, exercise and mental stimulation means that if they don't have that as puppies and during adolescence, they can quickly develop problems and defensive behaviour, meaning they bite.   We assume, given the many adoption enquiries I get we have to reject,  that as a puppy this poodle was left alone all day and expected to entertain and train itself.  Of course that's not possible, and I'm sure there are smacks and threats when the puppy fails to teach itself how to behave in a way that pleases the owner. The fact that this poodle boy was found wandering on the street speaks volumes, and what typically happens is that someone buys a puppy from a pet shop or breeder, then tires of it after a while and passes it to a friend who subsequently gives it to someone else and so on, until finally nobody wants the dog and it's left on the street.   Having seen these types of poodles so many times over the years we know that once they trust you they're fine, but for obvious reasons they can't be in homes with children or inexperienced adopters. 

Storing the Buddy Bites donation

Dodging the rain that seems to come out of nowhere, we took delivery of an amazing 800 kilos (!!) of donated Buddy Bites  food for our Tai Po dogs, which is a fantastic help when it comes to feeding hundreds of dogs.  This donation is thanks to everyone who buys Buddy Bites and as a result has some extra given to HKDR for every purchase.

Plenty of bones to go round

I also have to once again thank growsFresh  for another huge donation of organic bones which my Lamma dogs really enjoy.  Thankfully there's plenty to go round so there's no squabbling over who gets them!