Apologies for my prolonged absence but I’ve been technologically challenged these last few weeks. Promise to do better in the coming months.

What a good thing I am back up and running though as some alarming news has reached me. Apparently a growing number of dogs are going missing from their homes. It’s not unheard of for dogs to take themselves off exploring if their yard isn’t secure and reappear a couple of days later but it seems that too many have been disappearing for it tone coincidence. And from secure yards.

All of which suggests that dognappers are on the prowl. From the information my friends at Montego Bay Animal Haven have received it is mainly large breed, unneutered male dogs which have been vanishing. Common sense dictates then that they are being taken to breed.

Thankfully I’m a small, female, spayed mongrel so, paws crossed, I don’t fit the popular category but there are several measures responsible owners can take to safeguard their four footed friends.

The obvious things are to ensure that your yard is secure and that your pet has a collar with a name tag. These will firstly prevent your dog from wandering and, if he or she does, the identifying tag will enable anyone that finds them to get in touch with you.

That’s all well and good for those with the wandering habit. Now for the measures that’ll make your mutt less pinchable.

Don’t encourage your dog to become too friendly with anyone, restrict their interaction with humans to family and close friends, people who are part of your day-to-day life. Restrict further the people who feed your dog – you don’t want them accepting food from any and everybody. A well-trained dog will ignore food offered by strangers, taking only from those they are allowed to.

Another great idea is to get your dog microchipped. The JSPCA, recently opened in Montego Bay (hooray!) and long established in Kingston, offers this service. The chip, programmed with all your dog’s details, is placed under the surface of the skin. Should your dog go missing and turn up, a quick scan will reveal their identity. Likewise if you think someone has your dog and they deny it is yours, the presence of the chip will establish the truth and give you the necessary proof.

Here’s hoping we all stay safe in our yards – but none of us can be too careful these days.

Woof woof!

Doggie greetings from a hot and humid hilltop home! Hasn’t it been warm? Even up here where it’s normally a good few degrees cooler than down in Montego Bay.

We’ve all been most resourceful in finding ways to stay cool. A couple of my more boring friends are happy to curl up on a cool tile indoors – when they get the chance – but some of us have been having far more fun. Three of my friends here love water – I’m not so fussed – so first chance to get in the fishpond and they’ve been there. The two footeds have tried to spoil that fun though but putting wire around and across the pond so they can’t get in. I think the fish are relieved!

The morning and evening ritual of the hosepipe coming out to water the garden has provided some cooling relief in the form of water snaps for the two Labradors here.They really love the water and are happy to be chased round by the hosepipe running at full pelt.

However I have just discovered a new cool down method and I’m loving it. A large pile of sand appeared in our garden the other day, I think it has something to do with building work, and if you dig in it and make a little hollow to roll in, that is the perfect chillout trick.

Needless to say the two footeds are not happy with this, particularly as Scratchy and I taught the others the benefits of rolling in the nice cool sand.  There were some raised voices when they came out the first morning after the sand had arrived to find it had been scattered quite widely across the garden. And they don’t seem to keen on it being trodden through the house. Where’s their sense of fun? If it was a beach house they wouldn’t mind, I’m sure. They’ve even tried covering the sand with one of those big blue plastic sheet things – but we’ve either crawled under it or ripped through it, in the case of the big dogs, in our pursuit.

So we’re here cooling out by whatever means possible. All of us have now had the all clear from tick fever which is great. With tick season soon over let’s hope there’s no further reoccurrences of that. Stay cool.

Woof Woof

Sorry I’ve been quiet for so long but I’ve been laid a bit low by tick fever. What a nasty business that is. To be honest I didn’t even know I had it until the vet came to visit as one of my bigger friends here, Shadow, wasn’t feeling well. A quick blood test for all of us showed that three of us have got this miserable disease. I’m one of the lucky ones, I’ve had no real symptoms which means I’m in the very early stages and hopefully the antibiotics I am taking should see it off pretty swiftly.
It was a surprise to all of us that some of us tested positive. Living in a rural area we are potentially prone to tick infestations but we are dipped regularly, inoculated and our coats are treated with chemicals to keep the nasty critters at bay. Our two leggeds also spray the garden fairly regularly to try and keep them out of our playzone and our bedding is washed every couple of weeks just to make sure.
There’s no real rhyme nor reason as to why I caught it but my sister Scratchy, with whom I curl up every night, tested negative. But from what I understand a tick has to be on one of us for 24 hours for it to have a chance to infect us.
Signs to look out for in your dog are loss of appetite – that’s what our humans first noticed. And a quick temperature take for Shadow showed a fever of more than 105 degrees. Typically a dog’s temperature should be between 100 and 102 degrees. Poor Shadow had to be cooled down with ice packs and rubbing alcohol. Other symptoms are depression, swollen glands and painful joints.
The trick is to seek immediate medical attention as soon as you suspect something’s up. We try to tell you when we’re not feeling great but it doesn’t always translate.
We’re all on antibiotics now, a kind that treats all strains of tick fever – and there’s a lot of strains. We’ll all be tested again in a couple of weeks to make sure it’s coming out of our system. Shadow’s fever has broken and she’s getting her appetite back slowly and we all think it’s fab that we get little sausages and piece of cheese a couple of times a day. The humans think we don’t realize there are tablets in these treats? How daft are they!
Woof Woof.

WHAT a lot of rain we’ve had in the last week or so. Hope you’ve all managed to stay dry and safe. It’s been quite good for us here as the two-foots have take pity on us and let us stay inside when it’s really been bucketing down. I think they were fed up with the muddy pawprints.
Of course that’s led to the battle for the dog beds inside but as I’m small I can squeeze on with just about anyone. We did have one night with some terrible thunder and lightning. It was like daylight outside with all the flashing and the thunder sounded like it was on top of us. A couple of us aren’t too keen on that and so we curled up together and slept under the human bed. Bliss.
It certainly beats being caught out in these rains as street dogs. That’s no fun trying to find shelter. It’s bad enough trying to feed ourselves each day but when the rain comes it’s ten times worse. I hear the Montego Bay Animal Haven is planning to put out some kind of shelters for those dogs not as lucky as us. I’m sure they will be gratefully received. This weather system has been a sharp reminder of the kind of rain we can see during hurricane season. Here’s hoping we don’t have too active a year.
Word has also reached me that the Haven is planning some big special event next month. Stay tuned to the charity’s Facebook page to find out what’s going on.
In the meantime, stay dry.
Woof Woof!

It’s been a busy couple of weeks on the home front. We’ve had workmen nearly every day and they’re always fun to bark at. All of us have been locked away in the house and the back garden so we don’t interrupt – more like scare – the workmen. But I find that standing at the side gate snarling and howling is pretty effective. I may be small, but I have a big bark and like to put it to use wherever possible. Being contained in the house and back garden has its advantages too as we get to curl up and sleep in a lot more comfort than when we’re shut outside! Once the workmen have left each evening we’ve been given full run of the yard and that’s been great fun as trenches have been dug and they’re great to explore.
We’ve also had some visitors to the house, I think they were a bit overwhelmed by all of us at first but a couple of days in and they seem to like me and Scratchy the best. We’ve been working it, we’ve been on our best behaviour and worn our cutest faces. They even said something about taking us home, one in each suitcase, but they live somewhere cold and they agreed that the change in temperature and weather might not be something we’d like. I know that some of the other dogs that have been rescued by the Montego Bay Animal Haven have ended up going overseas. It seems to involve quite a lot of paperwork and tooing and froing between various authorities but it can happen. We’re quite happy here for now but it’s good to know that some dogs do get that opportunity.
Woof Woof!

Hi guys,

Here’s hoping you all had a very happy Easter and enjoyed the long weekend. We certainly did, lots of sunshine meant lots of watering of the garden which means watersnaps for me, Scratchy and the other mutts here. There’s nothing like being chased with a cooling stream of water from a hosepipe on a hot afternoon. Scratchy’s not too fond of it – she hates having a bath too – and usually hides underneath one of the vehicles but I love it.

We also had our own doggie Easter Egg hunt. Obviously not of the chocolate variety as that wouldn’t do us any good at all. But bones and toys were hidden all over the garden and then we were let loose to hunt them down. I may not be the biggest dog here but I’m one of the fastest – and being small has its advantages when you need to scramble through the bushes to find a tasty treat.

We’ve got a new arrival in the yard, a young puppy boy called Monty– the first male dog here. He’s very lively and has teeth like needles but it’s good no longer being the smallest dog in the pack. Me and Scratchy hang out with him a lot, playing and curling up together on one of the big dog beds when his batteries run out and he needs a re-charge. I think he’s wary of the bigger dogs here who do romp a bit rough at times but he gives as good as he gets. Like any young pup though he can be a bit cheeky so I’ve taken on the role of keeping him in line. When he first arrived he was so small he had trouble getting down the steps to the garden so I took it upon myself to gently nudge him down; he soon learnt to do it for himself.

Anyway best be off. We’ve got workmen coming this week so best stand guard by the gate ready to let rip with my biggest bark when they arrive.

Woof Woof

Stripey

Those two-footed friends at the Animal Haven have asked me to put paw to keyboard and keep a blog on life as one of the lucky few who were rescued and re-homed.

To fill you in, me and my sister were found in a pothole in downtown Mo Bay. It was a pretty grim existence as young pups, dodging the cars and trucks and scraping around for scraps to eat. But then we were scooped up and taken to the animal haven.

What a place – haven’s the right word for it. Plenty of safe space to run around with other friendly dogs, regular meals, lots of attention from humans who were a lot nicer to us than the ones we’d met before we were found, even full medical care. It was a paradise compared with life on the streets. To this day I still think about the other dogs living rough and thank my lucky stars we were taken in.

When we first reached the haven some joker called us Pot and Hole. I suppose they thought that was funny. Then our names changed to Paisley and Shelby. We quite liked those.  Since then we’ve been re-named Stripey and Scratchy, my poor sister having had a bit of a skin condition for a while. She’s not amused but she plays the game, humouring the humans. We’re also called the Micromutts. To be honest, we’ll answer to anything as long as we like the humans calling us and there’s a doggie treat or a cuddle involved.

Time came to try and find us what the humans call a forever home. I wasn’t too sure what that meant but figured it would be a bit like the haven. They have so many strays coming in that they need to re-home us when we’re shipshape and good to go. Trouble was, forever homes seem a bit rare so Scratchy and I were fostered out. The idea was we’d go to a new home and stay there until this forever home could be found.

We reached our foster home in August last year. It was a bit scary at first, lots of new smells, places to explore, different humans and different dogs. But we quite liked it, the two-footeds seemed decent enough, so we made sure we were on our best behaviour. Neither of us wanted to end up back on the streets. We had our own kennel, our own bowls, a dog bed and even some toys. Heaven!

And we’re still here. Enough from me for now, holes to dig and people to bark at. But I’ll be back on before long.

Woof Woof!

Stripey