singapore special Archives - We live in a flat

Tag: singapore special

I seldom set up anything for the photos on this blog. Alot of it was: it is happening, quick get the camera/phone. So a lot of the photos were really candid, although some became an exercise in stay, stay, stay… because I am too slow and need her to hold on doing whatever she was doing. :P

Sometimes it works, most times it doesn’t because looking at the human to see if she will get a treat for staying became more important, or she looks away and stops doing whatever cute thing she did.

But I did have to jump some hoops for this shot. And so did Donna.

Dear readers,

By weliveinaflat

On July 16, 2013

In Dog & You

The About section of this blog tells you something about us, our dog adoption story and why we started the blog. In a sense, I like to think that we are blogging the change with every post about our dog Donna.

You see, unlike in the United States where pit bull ownership seem to be the contentious issue, it is not so here. The reason is simple. Pit bulls are not allowed here unless one has a lot of spare cash and really wanted a pit bull. What we have here is a dog ownership landscape comprising mostly of toy and small-medium breeds suitable for people living in flats (the most predominant housing over here), and then some larger dog breeds for people in private or landed property. (Sydney has a post on 10 most popular Singapore dog breeds here.)

Coming back to local mongrels like Donna, they just don’t fit into the scheme of things here. They are not a known breed being mongrels and so they do not appear on the list of approved breeds for public housing. They are generally bigger and heavier than 15kg, which is the weight limit for unlisted dogs that could be approved for public housing on a case by case basis.

There are stray local mongrels that form packs in some areas of the country, namely forested and industrial areas. And because these are feral, not spayed or neutered, they eventually multiply enough to trouble the man on the street. Then the pest control is called in. Yes, the pest control.

Rehabilitating and rehoming dogs cannot be an easy task, let alone rehoming the local mongrel that is larger than most dogs the man in the street is comfortable to meet. A large poodle would be more of a rare novelty to gawk at, but a smaller local mongrel generally warrants a warning from parent to child that “that dog bites.”

So what change are we trying to blog here again? Mongrels for apartment dogs awareness of course! Smart, loyal, obedient and healthy!! IF you take the time to consistently train and care for it.

I would like to end this post by saying, look beyond the breed please. If you are considering buying or adopting a dog, see the dog for the individual that he is, his temperament and how well/keen you are to work with him to help him fit in your home before deciding if you can make the commitment for the long term.

Thank you for reading :)

P/S1There is an ongoing online petition for HDB homeowners to be able to keep a second dog through adoption, see here if you are interested.

P/S2 In case anyone is as curious as I was, these are some of the licensing requirements for the pit bull and 7 other dog breeds and their crosses in Singapore:

1. Dogs must be leashed and securely muzzled when in a public place…
4. The owner must take up an insurance policy for at least $100,000 coverage against injury to persons and damage to property
5. The owner must take up banker’s guarantee of $5,000
6. Any existing banker’s guarantee would be forfeited for non-compliance and the owner must take up a fresh banker’s guarantee of $5,000.
7. Newly licensed dogs must undergo obedience training

More information about the selected breeds requiring additional licensing here – http://www.ava.gov.sg/NR/rdonlyres/2FCF9F87-1FB1-49C8-A804-0611C26E95FA/18221/SummaryofAB_DoglicensingControl_Rules_15Nov2010.pdf

This post is inspired by Blog the Change.

Nat Geo Free Pet Shop

By weliveinaflat

On May 6, 2013

In Explore

Oct 6, 2014

NGC Free Pet Shop

We went to the 2014 National Geographic (Natgeo) Free Pet Shop at the Playground at the Big Splash, East Coast Parkway on Sunday.

Address: 902 East Coast Parkway, Singapore 449874 [map]
Time: 12:00p.m. – 06:00p.m.
The National Geographic Channel’s Free Pet Shop is Singapore’s largest dog adoption drive. The event will present a total of 80 adoptable dogs each day from various shelters, so it’s a good time to check it out if you are looking to adopt a Singapore special.

We went the previous year where the event was held over a grassy area. Saturday was rainy and thunderous, so we decided to to go on Sunday thinking that it may be less muddy. Our worry was needless, since we discovered upon arrival that the event was held over a paved area this time around.

Meeting old friends

This is about the one and only occasion Donna ever gets to see the humans that used to care for her at Gentle Paws. So of course, she was totally out of control jumping around and knocking them down in her excitement to lick the familiar faces to her.

Honestly, I think my dog has more friends than I have. Haha!

It was always awkward for me though. I mean, these people are there to talk to potential adopters to rehome their dogs. So it always felt out of place for Donna to be sitting there waiting for her friends to pay her some attention and refusing to come away so we’ll stop obstructing the traffic.

But I guess, they will forgive her exuberance and excitement to see them again.

The Booths

Eventually we got away from the row of shelter rehoming booths to visit the other commercial stalls. If I remember correctly they were in this sequence

Starhub Happy Tails Lawn (got a scarf),
APAWZ (we already got a trainer, sorry),
The Barkery (not into carbs),
Therapy Dogs Singapore (already joined),
Solid Gold (Donna doesn’t eat this),
Furry Photos ($400 photo session) and
Subaru (FREE Prinstagram!)

Since the human is an Instagram fan, she went to the Subaru booth to ask more about what the Prinstagram was about.

Besides free printing of your photos hash-tagged #subarumoments, there was also an artist who would draw a caricature of you and your dog for free! The waiting time was 30min because there was a queue but the human decided Donna should get her first caricature, yay! :D So we added ourselves to the waitlist.

The Lost Paws Booth was adjacent to Subaru

They asked if we wanted to take a photo with Donna. Ask and you shall receive, so we did.

Enjoying the seabreeze outside

Because the paved area got pretty hot in the afternoon heat despite the tents, we spent much of the time outside on the grass waiting to be notified for our turn at the caricature booth.

That’s where Donna met Dywane, also from Gentle Paws.

Donna wanted to play immediately, the silly girl.

Here’s a picture of her with another Gentle Paws dog. ~~They have a few in this colour, so I’m not sure if it’s Dywane or not.~~ I was told he is Mario. It’s just a funny photo because his paw is touching her nose, due to the camera angle. I hadn’t realised it until a Gentle Paws volunteer commented on Facebook! :O

Meeting insta-friends

Mango the Sheltie and we were making our rounds around the fair separately, so I wasn’t able to take a photo of him when I had my camera out. Besides him, we also met a few of our insta friends like samforest and pecanwoods loolim, skippy and jestasheltiex. Yes, I never took photos of all of them. Boo!

But here’s Cobie with a #dogsquish face. :P

Lemme out of this bag!

I took this just as Cobie and Mango were leaving.

Then we walked over to 7-11 to get our brainfreezed and finally, we got summoned for the caricature.

Our caricature!

Tada!! Donna says I shouldn’t have photobombed her.

Last thoughts

We went last year, and I was a little overwhelmed by the crowd and shyer about looking at the stalls, which meant I was mostly standing about the sidelines and feeling quite bored. Haha.

But this time round was really good because I was just more confident about handling Donna in a crowd. We also got to talk to one or two of the shelter volunteers who have kindly commented on our Facebook and sad, to say, I know them by their Facebook handles only. So it was definitely good to put a face to the Facebook name!

Also fun to see some of the insta-folks, even if it was more hi and bye because of the crowd and the traffic.

And last but not least, we appreciate the little mementos we get to bring home from the event both years we went – the caricature, the prinstagrams and a freebie collapsible waterdish from Subaru. Donna also got a toy Subaru toy car last year that she really liked.

Prinstagrams – one for Mr P and one for the human, perfect!

See more Singapore dog-friendly events.

May 6, 2013

Event advertising image via ngc singapore

There was an adopt a free pet event this weekend and Donna’s shelter was one of those shelters taking part in the event. The nature of an animal shelter is an interesting one, in that they exist because there are many unwanted animals. A shelter will probably never be half-full or half-empty because the demand for space exceeds the supply. If a shelter were ever half empty, it would actually be a good sign of dogs being rehomed and less dogs on the street to take in. But I suppose shelters will be heartened if they are only half-full since than they have the capacity of taking in more homeless dogs. I don’t think any shelter will ever think that they are half-empty, only that they are half-full and running out of space pretty soon.

Is the glass half-full or half-empty you ask? Doesn’t it really depend on the contents of the glass and how much you desire whatever is in it?

The crowd of people and dogs at the National Geographic Free Pet Shop event had Donna all excited. We tried to get her to sit for one minute on the Subaru challenge mat but she was too distracted to last that long :/ She jumped all over the shelter humans that she knew but hadn’t seen for quite awhile. Until they had to “dismiss” us so that they can get on with their business of finding good homes for the other dogs. But that’s ok since Donna was happy to return to her main preoccupation of inspecting the grass very insistently. Yes, not the other dogs, not the other people but the grass. The only dog she paid attention to was a brown dog Dada, whom the shelter people called her boyfriend. So it was good she found someone to play with for a while.

We were told that Donna was one of the dogs on the event advertising banner. Can you spot her?

So yah, we happily clambered onto the empty stage to take a picture to keep for posterity :P

More about the local shelters and the mongrels that they try to rescue and rehome in the brochure below. Click to see the bigger image.

Facts You Never Know brochure via huneyzworld.

We’re not really good with crowds, and since the event was at East Coast Park, we took the opportunity to check out the beach with her. She went into the water readily enough but then found it uninteresting and turned back. She seemed to prefer digging at the sand. The day’s activity knocked her out and she ignored us in favour of her bed by 7.30pm tonight.

The cup of green tea on my desk has cooled as I sit here typing out this post. I’ll say it’s half-empty, since I do not plan to drink the rest of the tea that has gone cold.

Tamchiak, kiasu and kaypo is our dog

By weliveinaflat

On May 1, 2013

In Behaviour

kid at the vet: is she a doberman?
me: no, she’s just a mongrel

Maybe, I’m habitually self-effacing and sometimes I discount my dog too much… I was thinking I need to remove “just” from my answer. Anyway, the last time I introduced my dog as a rescued dog, my friend thought the dog goes around rescuing things haha~ so I’ll just stick to “she’s a mongrel.”

But I love the idea of describing the dog’s personality. Morgan from Temporary Home, Permanent Love‘s new post on rescued mutts tries to introduce particular dogs not by breed but by their personality and character traits. And since Donna is a mongrel, I thought I’ll writing about Donna in her format.

Donna: 50% exuberant, 50% tamchiakgui, 30% kiasu, 30% kaypoh, 20% potential disaster, 20% suspicious, 10% loving and 100% patient buddy for dog idiots.

*tamchiakgui = greedy ghost, used to describe someone with a love of food
* kiasu = afraid to lose out
* kaypoh = busybody, tries be in the know or have a paw in everything

Donna struck us as quintessentially Singaporean in her kiasu and kaypoh ways.

How kiasu is Donna?
She likes to get a head start when we play fetch. She won’t sit and wait for you to throw the toy. No, she must already run for the toy when you haven’t even thrown it. If she were in a race, she’ll be the athlete that gets disqualified for false starts.

And when it comes to being kaypoh, Donna is quite the busybody. She is “big brother”. She must needs keep an eye on everything. Mr P in the room and me in the living room? No problem she will be right smack at a point where she can see me and the bedroom door for when he comes out. Donna supervises me doing chores. She tries to inspect our food. And now and then, she’ll try to suss out unsuspecting strangers too, some not too happy about her sniffing them :/

I had briefly thought about teaching her “don’t kaypoh” every time she make to sniff some stranger but I haven’t really done it. So yes, she is essentially still a monolingual dog.

Napping and surveillance. Not mutually exclusive.

And food, what dog doesn’t love food? Stalk the kitchen? Yes. Sport the saddest soulful eyes for as long as it takes? Yes. Yes. Yes. I always thought saliva dripping out of the mouths of cartoon characters and visibly plopping on the floor was nothing more than overly-dramatic caricature. Doesn’t happen in real life. My dog showed me how wrong I was. :P

I’m not too sure how tamchiakgui came into popular use. Perhaps our ancestors think all ghosts are greedy, hence all the food offerings on top of the paper burning during Chingming. Now that I think about it, people do append the word gui (ghost) to the back of the adjective so kaypohgui works as well. Maybe our ancestors just had a fixation with ghosts in general, haha~

Anyway just so you know, 50% exuberant, 50% tamchiakgui, 30% kiasu, 30% kaypoh, 20% potential disaster, 20% suspicious, 10% loving and 100% patient buddy for dog idiots, may not all sound like all awesomely amazing traits but to us they can be pretty adorable at times and if that’s who our dog is, that’s who our dog is.

But that makes the introduction kind of wordy because a dog is not just a dog is she? So I’ll keep to “She is a local mongrel” for now.

Tamchiakgui, kiasu and kaypoh are words in the Teochew and Hokkien dialects. Use them with English with a sprinkle of Malay here and a smatter of Chinese there in Singapore and it becomes Singlish. Short, clipped sentences will do. We prefer efficiency in our language unless we’re writing it.