Mon 30th August: A long day

With Alice taking the week off and it being Kathy’s regular rest day (as well as Sunday), we were very short-staffed today.  I wanted to make my regular Monday visit to Pokfulam AFCD but the van was also needed to take dogs to both the Wanchai and Kowloon SPCA clinics, so it required some coordination and sharing to make it all happen.  As it turned out someone had forgotten to put any travel crates in the van anyway, so I was only able to take out yet another litter of baby pups (oh no!), and only because I borrowed one of the big, blue AFCD crates.  The other dogs will have to wait a bit longer.

Picking up volunteer May, and Lewis, an ex-Lamma doglet from Kowloon, I could see that Lewis was really very sick.   May had been given a bag of assorted medicines, but would that be enough?  To cut this particular story short because it’s still something that I’m very upset about, we ended up taking Lewis to the Wanchai clinic as an emergency in the evening.  He couldn’t even hold down water, let alone any food or medication, and he died in May’s arms just as we arrived. More on this later.

Things are rarely straightforward.  Paula and Iris, two female dogs, went to the Tai Po clinic, Petcares, to be spayed (desexed), but both ended up needing pre-surgery blood tests.  Paula had previously had a high white blood cell count, and Iris has no hair on her body and had to be tested for thyroid levels.  Thankfully the surgery could go ahead, so at least that’s two more out of the way.  We still need to find out why Iris is bald and what’s going on with Paula, but we’ll let their spay wounds heal first.

The marquee was finally erected in the play area (thanks to Sidney and Siu Pang), and now the dogs have what should be a fully waterproof cover when the rain comes again.  It’s like a big room with four ‘walls’ which can be rolled up (as they are now), or lowered for full protection. Right now the play area seems to have become a post-surgery recovery room, plus a somewhere-to-put-dog-when-there’s-nowhere-else space.  I did some moving around today to try and get some of the dogs moved out and into enclosures, and one of them was Marmalade, a dog many of you may remember from Pokfulam.

We were all very happy when Marmalade was adopted.  She had originally been a street dog and had been brought to us by someone who had been feeding her.  At first Marmalade hated being in a kennel, so much so that one day she made her escape.  She was free for a long time, living on Cyberport Road, before she was caught and came back.  After that she settled down and became quite happy with her kennel mates until she was finally adopted.

Marmalade pre-adoption

I got an email last week from the adopter saying he would have to return Marmalade because he was allergic, and adding that the volunteer who handled the adoption had assured him that he wouldn’t have any problems with Marmalade’s coat.  I strongly denied that this would be the case because we all know that there can be no guarantees when it comes to allergic reactions, and that there is such a variation in causes it’s impossible to know.  Either way, Marmalade came back and all I can say is that I’m glad she did.  She looks like a bloated whale, a ball on four legs, and she was overjoyed to be given the space of an enclosure to run around in.

Melon (still pretty fat in this photo) and friends

To end on a happy note, here are some photos of the bulldogs curently on Lamma.  They look as though they’re having fun, don’t they?

Pear, Avocado and Cooper