Our Latest Addition

Posted on 12.26.05 to Personal, Pets by Joan

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We have been talking about it for a while. Our lives would not be complete if we did not have an addition to our family. So we got another dog.

Everybody, meet Dinky – dinky ears, dinky walk (which I will explain in a bit).

We had the initial intention to adopt another mongrel, so headed out to the pet farms in Pasir Ris because some friends had adopted a sweet mongrel from Animal Lovers League there. We first stopped at Ericsson Pet Farm and some guy working there overheard that we wanted to adopt a dog, so he said that he had a really sweet Papillon for ‘adoption’ and that if we wanted her, to just pay a token sum. While I had my heart set on a mongrel, I decided to keep an open mind.

The guy told us that she’s a really sweet dog and that he just wants to find her a good home since her brothers and sisters have been adopted and she was all alone. He went on to say that she was just 5-6 months old. Because of the earlier comment, I suspected at once that there was something wrong with the dog, which he was not telling me. I later also noticed that she had funny hind legs.

Now, it is not that Terence and myself are not going to take a dog that has physical defects, but we would prefer if he had been honest with us. Anyway, before we left, he told us that the ‘token’ sum was $500 but for us, just $388. I wasn’t keen because I had originally intended to just spend $100+ in adopting a mongrel.

So we headed off to other pet farms and then to Animal Lovers League (ALL) who happened to be closed! Even after speaking to the people about my genuine interest in adopting a dog, they did not entertain my questions much. But after we had a good look at the mongrels in the compound, we came to realise that our place is way too small for another mongrel because all of them, except one, was bigger than Thunder! Having two of Thunder will be a bit of a squeeze in the house. Having one more that is bigger than Thunder would be a nightmare. So we had to scratch that and decided to go back and ask about the Papillon.

Also, I realised that the mongrels in ALL seemed more happy/contented than the Papillon stuck in the tiny enclosure. An observation I made, possibly to find reasons to adopt her!

Terence and I headed back to speak to the guy working there again and countered offered for the dog. It was not that we were not willing to pay for the dog, but we were most unwilling to pay good money to people who tried to pull many fast ones on us. He even went on to say that I had such good chemistry with the dog, when all the dog was doing in the cage was to look majorly depressed.

I was straight up with him and told him that I was genuinely interested in ‘adopting’ the dog, but I needed to know what her problems are. And I was pretty sure that her left hind leg was one. He went to speak to someone else then came back to me and told me that one of her hind legs is indeed longer than the other. I also asked for her birthdate – 22 March 2005, which makes her 9 months and not 5-6 months as originally told (because most times, pet shops have a hard time selling dogs of this age). I also said that the cost was too high.

Anyhow, to cut the super long story a little short, we managed to get a slightly cheaper price for her, he even threw in a free collar and a 10% discount on her food, and the dog is now ours. We decided to adopt her because we did not want her to fall in the hands of an unsuspecting person, who finds out much later that his dog had a leg problem only to dump her. Truth be told, if she was in good shape, we wouldn’t even consider getting her because we know that she would easily find a home. So I guess, we felt that we had to ‘save’ her from the evil clutches of money making dog traders.

Back to the dog. She walks in a damm weird way! That’s why Terence chose to call her Dinky – that she walks in a dinky manner. And because her ears are so huge, they are so dinky too! My dad says that she must be a cross between a Papillon and a kangaroo. We are going to take her to the vet tomorrow to get her checked out, and hopefully, the vet tells us that she is not in pain. If she is, we’ll see what we can do to alleviate her situation. My father thinks that we are crazy to get her because he thinks that we already don’t have enough space for Thunder and that Dinky looks really pathetic when she walks. But well, Dinky takes up near to negligible spapce in the house and we will definitely shower her with more love and attention and care than the average owner would.

The cherry on the icing is that Thunder loves her. He is so sweet and gentle with her. He did not growl at her, instead, he licks her all over her face, sniffs her occasionally to check on her. Suddenly, he is this sweet, big brother who is looking out for the younger one.

Ahh… my family feels rather complete now. :)

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