15th June 2008

Hi everyone. As I am dealing with the same sort of cases that I have spoken about already, I thought I would revisit some older events with you. Let me start with my first dog bite! It was a long time coming thinking about it...after 8 months of dealing with dogs, it happened!

There was a stray female dog reported to me in a business area in Gadong near the flyover. I had caught the dog and sterilized her and as usual returned her to her original pick up point. This by the way is very important. I have many people who call me to sterilize stray dogs and then ask why I am returning them to their origin. There are two main reasons for this: if I remove the dog, where should I put it? There is no land, no sanctuary, no holding area. Also if I take the dog to another area, it runs away immediately trying to find it's 'home' because the new area is unfamiliar and may contain other dogs who do not accept the 'new' dog. In this case, I am unable to monitor the health of the dog in terms of disease and feeding. The chances are good the dog will die. I have tried on two occasions to do this and in both cases the dog has gone missing within an hour of being set free even though food was placed near them to encourage them to stay.

Anyway back to the story. A week after the dog was sterilized, I got a call to say some poeple in the office weren't happy about the dog being back and because it was friendly, it kept approaching them. Some of the staff were nice to the dog and gave it food so of course it thought all people liked dogs.

So, in I go again and removed the dog. Several staff in and around the building begged me not to kill the dog. It just shows people are mostly unaware of what I do. I found a foster carer for her so I picked her up and took her there. She was ok in the van until I put a lead on her and then she freaked! She bucked and jumped and eventually ran under a table. It was whilst trying to pull her out of there that she bit me. It scared me but do you know even as frightened as she was, she didn't hurt me or even break my skin.

There is a happy ending. Her foster carers fell in love with her and decided to adopt her. She is still there and always happy to see us when we go for a visit. Her new owners named her Clover and her and her new playmates have since destoyed one of my handbags trying to get the treats out but the affection and kisses they give makes it worth it...can always buy a new bag...but not that sort of unconditional love!