Mutts & Me - Plus the adventures of Toy & Tui!: inthebigbighouse

Monday, 30 June 2014

Dogs come and go, but their pawprints stay in our heart

In a short span of 2-3 months since my last update, we have lost 2 dogs, no, 3 dogs.

It's hard to part with them but some how, our lives still have to go on.

We cried, we grieved, we held on to the sweet memories.

Tonic passed on shortly after I visited him at the vet. Went to pay him a last visit with Joei before he got cremated . It was quite sad. To see him in that state (blood oozing out from eyes and mouth) but.. with his health all this while I wonder if it is a better thing for him to leave this world and end his suffering.. Im glad I made my trip down to accompany him for the last time before he went away. Sometimes, you need to do what you feel you need to do. Do not wait till it's too late.

Tonic before his fur got cut botak <3

On the same week. We were told that Miller fall sick and went to the vet. He was very lethargic and weak. I remembered it was a Friday night and we planned to visit him on Sunday after paying our last visit to Tonic but because Miller's condition wasn't stable so Jeanine told us to visit him after he has stabilized.

That night, I browsed through all our old photos In the big big house - from they day i first met Miller when Jeanine brought him and Indie for pack walk to the last time I hugged him while celebrating Elliot's 10th birthday.

Couldn't control my tears when i look through the photos. He's the best giant dog I have ever met in my life. The first big dog that I shared a bed with.

The most patient and chill dog I have ever seen (he is super good with Cam and other dogs).

The first picture Jeanine sent me which made me fall in love with both Miller and Cam.

Miller: Cammie! U are tooo heavy now!! Ouch!!
Camcam: What a nice cushion~

Silly-est fat dog. He brought tons of joy and laughter to people around him just by being who he really is.

Here's Miller with the 3Ts at ASD tea party last year. He won 2 contest just by sitting down and doing a slo-mo pawpaw. LOL!

On Monday/tuesday morning at about 11am Jeanine told us Miller left.
He had lung damaged and cancer, and he was only 3 yrs old plus.......
You know how shitty that feeling is? When everyone is praying for him so badly, trying to stay positive for him, he still has to be taken away. Maybe he is here to teach us how to love, how to be kind to people, how to bring happiness to people around us, how to help those in need (he and Indie went for a few blood donation , and he was qualified as a therapy dog just shortly before he left).

I am lucky that I managed to send him off and see him for a last time..

Something which I will regret all my life if I dont.

Big boy Miller, you will always, always be in our heart.

You will always be the dog i love most in The Big Big House.

The last one to pass on was Bailey. Not sure if you guys remember him.. But he once stayed in The Big Big House for awhile. And he bunked in with me too..

Jeanine & Bailey

With the 3 furry friends crossing the rainbow bridge, more dogs came into my life as well.

We've Yvette and Tiger (aka Hercules) -- ya tiger AGAIN lol. So many tiger around, I have fate with tiger dogs ah.. They shared the same kennel as 3 Ts. Very very sweet dogs. Tiger came in like a living skeleton. Always get bullied due to his build and he has bow leg( probably because of long term caging when he was young). I am not very sure.

He got attacked by Tonkin a few times, and we tried to buff him and Yvette up as much as possible. They got extra yummy food everytime we go, Happy boy from opposite kennel tan tio lor. Hahahah always stand there gimme puppy eye so he got his share of yummy food too.

Yvette is a very sweet girl, small sized but you cannot bully her cause she knows how to stand up for her self to fight back ROAR.

This is cute Yvette

Yvette & Tiger

Billy's sister. BB.

And this is another sister, brownie. Their whole family de genes super good. All so pretty.

Picture credit to Ah Mah.

Jiang zhen de Im very kia si one. When I help dog apply medication on their wound, a part of me is scared that they will snap >.< When I help Tiger apply i have to talk to him: Guaiguai ah.. i must help u apply ah, not here to hurt u ah (den pray hard in my heart he dont snap lol). I guessed he understood that I mean no harm, and he gave me a kind of look *those eye contact, you know, got connection kind* when Im leaving.

And I finally learnt and mastered courage to force feed dog. Thanks to Joei hahaha, she demo and I tried on Tiger. #loser #kiasi I dont even dare to try on Tui LOL. I fed him medication wrapped in chicken liver when he's at my house. Tiger is the first dog I succeeded. Ok, so far only him, i need time to build trust before i try on other dogs hahah.

Oh! Kuaikuai &Lele/ Huan huan/xixi who used to share kennel with the 3 brothers got adopted already :D

And then, back to the big big house... we have Billy in da house! Billy is a female hor, not a boy.

She's Muddie's new gf. Both one-eyed -- Psst Jeanine, not 3-eyed. Muddie became more cheerful and less cranky ever since Billy came :D

Picture credit to Jeanine

Elliot's face has healed which is good.

And Indie now received more love cause she help Miller receive his share of love from us.

Special thanks to my Simi Simi Group for getting me a Birthday cake as a surprise, and also the lovely card from Jeanine and Cam :)

PP finally went home with Joei, after counting down for like... one year? Joei mummy is superrrrr happy and has prepared lots of things to welcome PP home. This is one happy ending ^^

Tex also went for homestay and hopefully he will successfully get adopted too. At least he doesnt have to stay in shelter anymore.

Well back to Tui boy.. He is the same old Tui boy. I still bring him for walks.. Long long walks. Some times we go harlus,

some times we walked to the bus stop outside, sometime we go Punngol there

What chu finding ah fatty boy?

and some times (the last time) we went to Pasir Ris beach like AGAIN. He is really one smart boy, even some Malay boys that happened to sit beside us while we were having water break got interested in him as Tui perform his little tricks. They even said Byebye to Tui before leaving LOL. Went to pet movers the other day with Tiger, yvette, Jackjack and Lucky. I was quite worried that Tui might attack Tiger/ Jack/ Lucky but I guess I need to be more zen. I zen, he zen. He went up to sniff Tiger's butt for a few seconds my heart almost stopped. Haha. But luckily tiger finished his pee-ing business and walk away. Then the rest of the time Tui just chill one side waiting for people to shower love on him.

The last walk to beach was quite... fun and scary. He was so excited the moment he see the sea water and chionged in like a happy fat boy.

色迷迷

I let him swim off leash as he knows how to U turn to where I put my bag after he has swam enough, didnt had time to remove my poop bag container from the leash and so... my poop bag container went swimming as well.

We were having a good time running in an open space on leash when a retriever run to us from nowhere. @.@ She/he is sooooo dead i thought. High speed + excited dog + Stranger dog + Tui = big nono. I was trying to use my leg to keep it distance from Tui while tui was there growling -_-. The dog is too excited and kept coming. The owner managed to catch hold of it and we continue our journey... im like, Phew..... and as we walked away i heard: x#$@#$ (the dog's name) !! I turned over...

SHIT LAH, THE DOG RAN OVER TO US AGAIN -____-"

Heart attack sia.

Cut long sotry short thou its already very long, I reached home only to realise that I have tons of cuts on my feet because I geh kiang went into the waters barefooted (didnt want to spoil my new wugui shoe).

Ok The end. Tml gotta work. Update again soon, I hope.

Good night!

Thursday, 10 April 2014

Random Updates - In the shelter and big big house

I just realised, this is gonna be the 2nd post of 2014 and its already April. My god.

Im currently lying down with Toytoy beside me (shes has been licking the pillow for the past 10 mins, and still doing so).

So... what have I been up to?

Shelter work was quite _____ (I cant find the right word) for the past few months. Was assigned to Tex and he almost drove me crazy with the constant pulling and tugging on our walks. Tried alot of methods but it doesnt work because his attention was 0 the minute we bring him out. Felt so frustrated when I bring him for walks because he drains all my energy within 15mins. So during the Cny break I took time off to find back my determination + motivation to continue working on him. (In between then I mostly brought my bf out for walk :X) I was at the brink of giving up rehabilitating him. And Im glad I didnt.

In my opinion, I realised when you want to help a dog, you dont just help, help (when the care and love doesnt come from within). To me, when I work on Tex for the first few times, I help because I need to, not because I really want to (as I felt that I couldnt connect with him). You can cheat the others, or lie to yourself, but they (the dogs) can sense it. That feeling sucked. Thats when I decided to give it another shot - start building bond with him from scratched, unlike Tui which I dont know why I fall in love with him the moment I had a long eye contact with him, bond and trust need to be built. For him and for me. With love, my patience level for him increased, you dont have to purposely remind/control yourself to remain calm, you will just naturally do. Just like how I spent my time working on Tiger, Coco and socks. Not sure how other volunteers work... but this is what I feel, I need to have a certain kind of bond with the dog before I can put my heart and time in productively.. :D

Together with "Ah Mah" Cinthia, we took turns to charge him in the kennel. I would say luckily she hanged on because somehow she was one of the reason that I didnt stop - we supposed to work as a team, if I backed out, left her only and that makes me feel bad. Tex behaves very well in the kennel, very attentive especially when there's food. But the moment he goes out *BAMMMMMM* you can fly. Then again he is really super sweet and can sit very well beside you waiting for treats. Months passed and we decided to bring him out for short walks. Sadly, he was very reluctant to leave kennel when we were all ready to bring him out. For my case, I had to coaxed/pull abit and wait for him... that took me about 15-20 mins to get to the garden area.

With Cynthia's help (we go on different days lah, so i didnt really see her in the shelter but she brought him out for walks together with Jia Hui, Baby, Sasha and Peanut), Tex improved quite abit! Now he can go for pack walk without killing me immediately. (So far we went to pet movers nia).. Gonna try walking to Halus this weekend with him and hopefully he will maintain.. Loose leash walking yo! *Cross fingers*

Handsome boy

In between March, I embarked on my special- long procastinated-project of painting the kennel walls again. This time round, alone LOL.

I started on a weekend and I realised Im too naive to think that I can paint the walls with 5 cans of paints, a brush, a plate and a pencil. Awesome. WHERE IS THE THINNER TO CLEAN/WASH THE BRUSH. -____-" Previously when we painted LOL kennel (Labour of Love) all the stuff were provided. See lah, take things for granted.

So in the end I only managed to draw the rough sketch and painted the outline on that day. Went to get all the necessary items and more colors ;) before I went back on a weekday to complete my project.

I sat there for a good 5 hours. Tiring. But the kind of simple happiness couldnt be replace. Just paint, listen to songs, occasionally gg into the kennel to play with the boys (3Ts).. Naise..

Here's the final product:

Poop Poop

Poor boys had to be locked up for 5 hrs while I paint. Dont wanna risk my art work nor their lives. Later they go and lick the paint i die..

Here's Kai kai and Xin xin.

If you have watched the dance video of 2 dogs imitating korean girls (Keep jumping non-stop), yeah..

They are the ones..

They looked like 3 T's family, blend in perfectly.

Super affectionate and love to pounce on you!

Here's a random pic of Tomas.

Signature Sio Bak pose.

Here's Lucky~ And Ps: Look at Fat jack behind..

Jackjack

Tonkin after drinking milk..

He planned to save those milk for supper..

Visited Tonic during one of the weekday as he fainted in the shelter due to stroke. Old boy can still eat and drink alot. Luckily...

Brought Tui boy for a swim at Pasir ris park the other day.

The sun was scotching hot but we havent go to the beach for soooo long..

and so....

Tui: Dont like that look at me leh, never see people swim so gracefully before meh?

It was worth the sweat when I see him running into the waters and swimming happily..

Crocodile dog

i know right, the water damn dirty. It was high tide.

Looking at the malay family having bbq. And they were looking at him too (He was showcasing all his tricks in order to get the home cooked chicken i brought). Secretly 暗爽 and Hao lian when I heard them passing comments to one another, they sound impressed. Muahaha.

This kind of face only appear when I have food in my hand -__-

The journey back was so torturing for the both of us.

On the way back into kennel I decided to put my bag in the car first, the moment i opened the car door.... ZZZZ FATTY TUI QUICKLY RAN UP and PARK HIMSELF INFRONT OF THE AIRCON.

Kns. Den where i sit?!

Tried coaxing him and pulling him out but he was super determined to rest for a good 10 min. I had to sit at the back while waiting for him to rest finish. Dog slave.

Meanwhile In the Big Big House...

Muddie boy had his surgery to remove his right eye. Went to visit him before his surgery