Good things come in pairs

It's not very often that dogs who turn up in SPCA end up being caged with another. But we've had 2 pairs in the last month I've been there.


Bubbles and Baby

These 2 GR boys were adopted not long after I saw them on the 20th of April. Hopefully (and I think they did, see below) they were adopted together and are happy in their new home.


Sherry the Golden Retriever and Yao Yao the Chihuahua

This funny pair attracted lots of attention today at SPCA, with Sherry being so big and Yao Yao so tiny. I heard that the SPCA would prefer both dogs being adopted together, as, in the Pet Counselor's own words, separating them would make them pine for each other, and develop into post-adoption depression.

It's great that the SPCA takes such things into consideration when evaluating the suitability of families wanting to adopt dogs. Of course, adopting a dog is difficult enough, let alone two, and I wish both pairs all the best of luck in their new homes. Because the saddest thing is seeing a dog returned after having been rejected by their new home.

***

I just got back from Vietnam. The Vietnamese really love their small dogs, and I've seen a few hundred Chihuahuas in the one week I was there.

The mystery: where did all the cats go?

After almost 5 days, I finally saw my very first cat in Hanoi - a white long haired cat with blue eyes, tied on a string to the back door in an alley. The next cat I saw was another white long-haired cat tied to the entrance of a guesthouse. Most bizarre. But somebody suggested that it might be some kind of good luck charm.

I then learnt that Vietnamese eat dogs; then actually saw for myself dog meat being sold on the roadside on my way to Halong Bay (there was a Vietnamese sign advertising sale of dog meat, and a dog cage with 3 medium size dogs locked underneath); and heard speculation that the Vietnamese eat stray cats.

Chihuahua as pets made sense now: they ate relatively little, making it an economical choice for most Vietnamese who did not have the means to support a larger dog. Plus, little skinny Chihuahuas would not tempt your neighbour into stealing and killing it for dinner. But I couldn't fathom eating stray cats as most of them would seldom grow substantially larger than a Chihuahua. Stray cats are not totally extinct in Vietnam though. I finally did hear some feral cats running about rooftops at night in Hanoi, and visited 2 shops which kept local cats as pets.

An American volunteer at the animal shelter who I see every fortnight at SPCA made me laugh when she told me this morning that she had previously rejected a posting to Vietnam because she felt that her 2 huge 10kg cats would not be safe in Vietnam and could end up as her (prospective) Vietnamese cleaning lady's dinner one fine day.