doggy backpack

D & I just went to S.S.P. I bought a doggy backpack for Happy. It only cost me HKD110.00. It's orange and green in colour, Happy looked sharp in it! She took to the backpack instantly. We tested it out during her evening walk just now... she seemed to love it and felt important wearing it. Give the dog a job!! From now on, she is going to carry her own water!

BUT, guess what, the stripe in the front part broke from the seam!! Hmm... no wonder it cost only HKD 110. I will have to get it fix and reinforced all the seams at the seamstress tomorrow. Sigh! If it doesn't work, I might have to get a mountainsmith or a wolfpack banzai from online shopping! It might cost me a bomb after shipping charges!!! But, these two products do have great reviews and they last. We shall wait and see.... till tomorrow.

raw-feeding

It is pouring outside and Happy is having her princess nap, cosily tucked in her bed.

D & I just came back from the wet market, we bought 2 slabs of frozen pork ribs ( grass-fed black pigs), it's Happy's favourite! We bought a pig's heart for her too. We feed her a variety of raw food such as, beef steak, pork steak and ribs, lamb, whole chicken, duck, turkey, pig's/beef hearts and liver, eggs and fish.

I am an advocate for raw-feeding. The action of tearing the raw meat apart not only exercises her neck and jaw, it satiates her desire to chew, and at the same time the chewing of the meat cleans her teeth too! As raw meat is easily assimilated in the digestive system and fully absorbed by the body, the amount of waste produced is minimal. No more big smelly stool that takes forever to disintegrate, which kibble-fed dogs produced. Most kibble dog food are full of grains which the dogs cannot utilize in their body! Dogs are carnivores, their digestive system is short and it's meant to handle raw meat. Some dog owners, after having switched their dogs to raw-feeding found that the allergies that their dogs were suffering all along were gone! (These allergies were caused by the grains in the kibble.)

The benefits of raw-feeding goes on and on. The 'normal' stinky doggy breath and body odour that pet-owners deemed 'the norm' and have been putting up with no longer exist! Coats are beautiful, shiny and fur colour is rich. Immune system are boosted and her strong immune system has made her a rather inhospitable host for any serious infestation! She still gets the occasional tick after a romp in the bushes, but that usually doesn't posed a big problem for her. Overall, I am glad that I made the decision to switch Happy to raw food while she was still a puppy! I have a healthy and happy dog!!

she swims!

It was so hot at home, both D & I were drenched with perspiration... let's go to Wong Lung Hang stream for a dip! Great idea! We'll drive and then take a 20 minutes walk to Wong Lung Hang dam catchment pool. Happy is coming along with us. When we were halfway walking along Wong Lung Hang Road, it started to rain, then it began to pour!! We were caught in the rain! I didn't want to turn back and go home, so we waited for the rain to stop. We continued our walk when the rain got lighter. Finally, when we reached the dam, the rain stopped. The water was crystal clear and very clean, it's unbelievable! Without hesitation, I leashed Happy and walked into the pool. She was quite resistant about getting into the pool initially, but after some force and encouragement, I got her in and she started to swim! Hooray! At last, my baby swam. It was such a joy to see her overcame her fear of swimming. After a while, when she gained enough confidence, she even swam after D to the other side of the pool a few times!! Both of us were so proud of her and kept encouraging and praising her, Happy enjoyed it so much and so did we! Praise the Lord!

dog attack!

D & I went for our routine walk with Happy this evening, on the way, we met our neighbour walking her two big dogs. One of them, the white dog with black patches which was not leashed attacked Happy unprovoked! As Happy wasn't leashed, we couldn't pull her away quickly. The dog was really fierce and Happy was so scared, she had her tail tucked in fear and urinated on the floor which is the ultimate doggy submissive gesture but that dog still wouldn't let up!!. D had no choice but to kick the attacking dog in the ribs twice to save Happy, which was pinned down on the floor by that big dog still attacking her. The owner just stood there doing nothing except yelled at her dog! Sigh! I felt really unsettled after this incident, I prayed that Happy and her doggy calming signals (Great book - On Talking Terms with Dogs: Calming Signals by Turid Rugaas) will not be greatly affected by this dog with it's unfriendliness and defective body language. In future, we'll take extra care not to bump into this neighbour and her mad dogs!

D said a prayer for me as I was quite affected by it. Now I felt better as Jesus is my peace! We prayed for Happy too, that she will be unaffected by this incident and that she will have Daddy God's protection on the road in future! Amen! She is such a blessed dog!

beware of heat stroke!

Happy loves to go for walks, especially on long hikes in the mountains and even stream-trekking! We try to accommodate her most of the times depending on the weather and locations of our hikes. Summer is not a good time for her, as the weather is really really HOT! We just heard in the news that two Golden Retrievers died of heat stroke while out hiking with their owner in this weather. Such a sad incident due to the ignorance of the dog owner. Sigh! Check out this website for more knowledge on canine heat exhaustion/stroke.

Happy doesn't like to swim, although we had tried several times on different occasions to lure her into the water, she just wouldn't go into the water! The strange thing is, she loves running and splashing in shallow water till she gets all wet, but just short of immersing herself completely in water to swim! Anyway, we'll continue to work on that. Happy adores stream-trekking, but we've decided not to bring her for any future trips because she has a bad habit of bumping into our legs while we are trekking and balancing on the rocks and boulders. For our own safety, it is better this way. Sori my baby!

happy

Happy, our sweet darling dog, she will be 2 years old in August 2009! Wow! How times fly! We adopted her from an animal rescue shelter when she was just a wee little nine weeks old cutie pie.

She has been raw-fed since she was three months old. The benefits of raw-feeding are tremendous such as healthy shiny coat, clean teeth, no doggy breath and odor, minimal stool and most importantly, she is strong and breeming with health from this diet! I will talk more about raw-feeding in my future post, till then!