We live in a flat

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A sleepy dog and bedtime stories

On March 21, 2013

When her ears are in this position, I think of them as Dobby ears… though its not exactly like that :P

These couple of days, Donna has been making yelping noises during her afternoon nap. Sometimes, you can see her legs and even her stomach twitching pretty violently. Think when you are making very bad hiccups and you whole body jumps with each hiccup. That’s sort of what it looks like to me, except at a faster rate than hiccups.

At first I was alarmed since we had Donna for more than two months now and she had never done that before. Then I googled and read that this twitching is normal in dogs. Should I be glad that perhaps Donna now feels at home enough to go into REM sleep?

Do your dogs twitch when they sleep and how violently do they do it?

Street cats and strange dogs

By weliveinaflat

On March 21, 2013

In Explore

These couple of mornings, Donna and I went to the hilltop park for our walk. As mentioned here Singapore is a wonderland for stray cats and one can usually encounter several on a daily basis. So here’s the usual gang giving my dog the stinkeye. It’s almost like the dog has some mind control magic over the cats. All of them have to follow the dog with their eyes, heads turning like radars, until we walk out of their territory.

Cautious must be her first name. Moved a meter away when Donna got close and then stood her ground, before carefully burrowing into the bushes.

And this fat cat is too cool to move. It was just sitting there minding its own business when Donna came along.

And when I made Donna sit, it sat too.

Similar coat but this is a different cat.

It’s just as pretty though.

And then most unexpectedly and out of nowhere, there was a dog suddenly sniffing around Donna, with no leash or collar. I thought it might be a JRT, but I am not the walking dictionary of dog breeds so, it’s a dog. Although, its coat reminded me of cows :P

Lost dog? Or just dog off its leash? I have no idea but it was approaching dogs in a friendly fashion, with no obvious owner in sight.

There it is again checking out a different dog. Donna wanted to approach the dogs so she sat. That’s her way of asking or refusing to move. (At least that’s what I think, can’t read her mind.)

Eventually the owner-less dog turned back and trotted with us for a bit, stopping frequently to raise its leg and nonchalantly mark public property with pee. *sigh* I was wondering if it was going to follow us home and I was to put up a FOUND notice. But it ran ahead and scared a toddler with his mom. I held Donna back while they passed. Then Donna decided she needed to poop. The last I saw, the dog was in the distance heading down the stairs out of the park with an elderly man. I hope they belonged together.

It is a nice breezy day for a walk. I haven’t been that interested in taking pictures for some time, but blogging has got me trigger happy again and I got some ugly shots of my ordinary looking dog.

She likes to look away from the camera… at her own oscar-winning “Scream” face. Nah, she’s yawning, but I thought that face looked quite horrified :P

She is patient, while I took shots of nothing in particular.

Well actually, I just thought these trees looked nice in a sculptural way.

Yes, adding filter effects for a romantic feel. I’ve never been to Japan to see the famous Sakura blossoms, but there’s nothing to stop one from enjoying other plants and flowers in the local park!

On the other side of the path, we found equally textural dried leaves. She had to inspect them for my safety. :P

This path that we were on runs parallel to the train line. It’s a nice walk down and helps to get Donna used to loud rumbly sounds, we hope.

Soon it will get too hot, so head home we must, to breakfast!

Note: A scan through the lost and found pages yield no Missing dog results for a JRT in our area in the last 2 days.

Donna doesn’t bother our Siamese fighting fish

By weliveinaflat

On March 20, 2013

In Behaviour

… but she sometimes thinks she is entitled to fish food, so she steals the bottle of fish fish in the hopes of getting to the pallets inside. So far for her efforts, all she accomplished was a chewed bottle cap. Fish food is safe!

Mr P and I live with our dog Donna and a Siamese fighting fish.

We had the fish first. My health wasn’t very good so my husband Mr P bought two fishes to give a bit more life to our two-person home. One of the fish has since died, so we are left with one.

We got the dog later. I had fractured my ankle and was suffering from nerve problems in my toes, spent a lot of time at home alone. With all that time, we thought we were finally ready to get a companion animal. But since I couldn’t walk very much, we didn’t adopt the dog until later when I regained some mobility. Donna became very much a exercise companion, pushing me to go take a walk and exercise that foot even though it hurt everyday.

One feels livelier with a dog. Donna has this constant positive energy about her, always ready to go out and explore the world. Always ready to jump up to her feet and follow to see what’s up, even if she was napping. (OK, I lie, sometimes she only raises her head, as if trying to decide if it is worthwhile moving her whole lazy body.)

She finds such joy in simple things that she cavorts, almost obsessive compulsively, always welcoming you home with a toy in her mouth and her tail wagging like a helicopter ready to lift off. It’s as if she doesn’t move, she will explode.

And yet, when she calms down, she gives very endearing gentle licks on your toes, on your knees, on your hands, any part of you that she can reach.

The dog didn’t ask for us or it’s previous owner to give it a home. We heard Donna was abused. And when she was returned to the shelter, her mother and siblings didn’t welcome her. They couldn’t get along. The shelter had to put the dog that couldn’t get along with an old dog that could suffer her.

But Donna didn’t seem too unhappy with her lot even when she was at the shelter. There were volunteers to play with, and she could always watch the main door in anticipation of the next dog or human that comes in.

And when she came home with us, she adjusted. Sure there’s less excitement here with two quiet adults than at the shelter, but she has a roof over her head and food to eat. She doesn’t get cold and wet when it rains for days during the monsoon season. And she gets three walks a day rather than two walks a week when the shelter volunteers come in on weekends to walk the dogs.

It’s not difficult to enjoy life, the ups and downs and all it brings. The dog does it, we can too.

My dog is sometimes fearful

By weliveinaflat

On March 18, 2013

In Behaviour

We met Uncle Gardener again this morning on our walk. Donna seem to recognised him from the previous two times we bumped into him. Her tail was wagging and friendly. She sniffed around his legs, probably checking out the cat scent, but was having too much fun on her own to “sit” or “paw”. Things seem to be going well until Uncle Gardener reached out his hand to pet her on the head. She jumped and her head hung low to avoid his hand. Everything about her screamed nervous.

For all she is friendly and playful, this dog does have random episodes where she reacts fearfully. Early on, Florence had pointed out to us how Donna is so ideal in the home environment, we had thrown a toy which landed near a bunch of big boxes stacked together, that dog was almost tiptoe-ing around the boxes as she carefully grasp the toy in her teeth before cautiously returning back to us with the toy.

Donna is a very cautious dog. Sometimes we wondered if it was because she was abused in her previous family.

Sometimes, we understood that her cautiousness was with good reason. When we got a new dog in her house, friends and family who liked animals would want to visit and play with the dog. These friends and family unfortunately are strangers to Donna and when the strangers’ focus are trained on her and they make a beeline for her once they enter the house, she starts to get nervous and she will siam. Yup, at these times, she becomes the master at avoidance tactics.

It didn’t help that some family members are rough and think that they need to show the dog who is the boss first, even if at the end of the day they just want to shower affection on the dog. It also did not help that people naturally want to help the poor scared dog, and end up cornering her to pet her.

When pursued by “strangers”, the nervous Donna will usually bunch up in her bed after she gives up avoiding them. But in this picture, she just wanted to be left alone because it is her bedtime.

These situations could have ended up badly, if Donna was not the type of dog to downstress and just freeze on the spot versus becoming fearful aggressive instead. I read that a dog that downstresses may also react violently when pushed past a threshold. With Donna, we have never reached the aggression threshold yet.

Much later, I met a guy from the Save Our Street Dogs organisation at a new grooming place I was trying out, and he told me that this contradictory behaviour of being fearful and yet calm (frozen in one spot rather than kicking and screaming and showing teeth) at the same time was a behaviour that our local street dogs are genetically predisposed to show.

Interesting, so Donna is genetically programmed to go from fearful avoidance and then to fearful acceptance, without the aggression?

I’m not so sure about that. What I do know is that Donna is not incapable of aggression. She has a “mortal enemy” at the shelter called Grace, a dog whom she would with certain predictability lunged at, only to be stopped by the leash and even then, the handler needs great strength to hold her back as she tears at the air.

But we have not seen this aggression away from the shelter. Not once.

Meanwhile, we’ve tried with limited success to help family members and friends learn how to not approach Donna in order to make the introduction to her a success. (Sometimes, older folks have their own opinions and think we are spoiling the dog. My goodness, they have NOT seen a spoiled dog, I tell you!)

We have also been making Donna go to her bed and lie down in a relaxed position so that she may slowly learn to find calm there, especially when she may potentially feel fear. It’s sort of like crate training, but without the crate since we don’t have one yet.

I try to get the inquisitive little girl to go to her bed and to lie there before opening the door when the doorbell rings. She may not always stay since she is the very soul of a busybody, but she does at least stand around 2m behind me, near her bed as I answer the door, which leaves space between her and the people at the door who may need to come in.

It’s working pretty well, whether it is the dog supplies delivery man, the carpet cleaning salesman, etc. We complete our transactions while Donna stands and watches on. Sometimes, she is amenable to come closer to sniff at an offered hand, especially when she sees the nice man is delivering her food.

But yes, we do have a bit of a way to go when it comes to socialisation and helping her feel more confidence.

Yup, she also gets nervous when the weekend cleaning lady starts to vacuum the floor.

Girl-dogs don’t bite!

By weliveinaflat

On March 17, 2013

In Dog & You

Ever since I decided to take Donna down three times a day for her morning walk and two pee breaks, to cut down on the cleaning and disinfecting I need to do at home, I get out of the house more often.

But going down just for the dog to inspect the grass can get boring. Although I’m sure the dog will disagree on that point. I mean, look at it.

That’s the, “It’s opening. It’s opening….oh, it’s not opening…. quick open the door so we can go out” look.

Anyway, once out of the door I start to plan the route we’re going to take because going down the same path all the time is really boring. But pee breaks are really short, and the path can’t differ all that much. That’s when we started to get creative and try to include doing errands on pee breaks.

Some nights, I dropped used and rinsed drink and dog food cans into the recycling bin that is a mere 3 minutes walk away. Or paper into the paper recycling bin which is just by our development. Drop the mail into the postbox. Go withdraw money at the ATM. Anything, as long as it is outdoors and accessible for a person with a dog. It’s really how creative we can get with the limitations that we experience living in a highly urbanised environment which may not be as dog friendly as some countries in the west.

The other night we drove out with the dog to the town hub. One of us goes to buy takeaway while the other walks and sits with the dog so that she also gets to be in a place with more strangers walking about their business. And Donna is getting good at sitting and staying for longer periods if the human is attached to the leash. She doesn’t react when people walk pass her. And she seem to be happy enough to sit and stare at groups of people, the man pushing the trolley in the distance, etc, etc. And mostly people just ignore her presence, except for kids who may go “woof, woof” at her.

Yesterday night we met a trio of kids that made me laugh.

Kid 1: Is it a girl? (referring to the dog)

Me: Yes.

Kid 2: Will she bite?

Me: No.

Kid 3: Of course she won’t bite, she’s a girl!

Heated discussion among themselves start.

But yes, I learnt something new that night, girl-dogs don’t bite! : D

Why we adopted a homeless local mongrel

By weliveinaflat

On March 16, 2013

In Dog & You

Truthfully, we didn’t really start out with a local mongrel in mind.

We went to the SPCA and being law abiding citizens wanted to look at HDB-approved dogs. The only HDB-approved dogs they had there were two mini schnauzers that looked bedraggled and none too appealing. I had read that they were stubborn and difficult to train and honestly speaking, I didn’t really want a dog with a beard :P

We went to a big pet shop in a neighbouring town. The small puppies there were cute but we were not sure if two people with zero dog experience can successfully bring up a puppy.

We finally decided we should adopt an adult dog that should ideally be toilet-trained, medium energy and around 2 to 3 years of age so that we have many years with the dog. Should we have a child, we certainly did not want a dog that will die of old age that soon and traumatise the poor child at age 7, for example. Yes, you may accuse us of over-thinking things.

With that in mind, I googled local shelters and wrote to them. The organisations replied speedily. I was asked to provide ASD with a shortlist of dogs on their website as some were fostered out and need to be fetched back if we would like to view them. Gentle Paws appeared not to have this problem and simply directed us to where they were located so we could view the dogs. Since we had no opinion on any dog on the websites, it was simply easier to visit Gentle Paws first and hopefully have somebody who could help us through the process of finding the right dog.

Gentle Paws turned out to be a busy hive that mothers mostly strays and mongrels. I am not the most confident of people so it was easy to feel overwhelmed and out of place when you are a visitor and everyone else seemed to know what they are about here. As shared in How Donna came to us, we couldn’t really differentiate the dogs and had no strong opinion on any of them. We almost left without a conclusion, which meant we probably would have followed up with ASD and perhaps ended up with a different dog if that was the case. For all you know we may have ended up with a known HDB-approved breed or ended up as one of those pilot guinea pigs in Project Adore. Or we could have gone on to The Rehomers or The Animal Lovers League and on and on until we found a dog or gave up.

But Florence intervened and introduced Donna to us. When she was not over-excited, Donna was really docile and tractable. And of course, Florence was very good at selling how smart and trainable Donna is, etc, etc. Between ourselves, we figured she was probably a good intro to Dog 101 for total noobs like us. And so the rest is history.

And there you have it. We didn’t set out to adopt a mongrel, but HDB-approved breeds in our target age range meeting our criteria seemed almost nil in the shelters we visited at that point in time. The availability or lack of guidance in the selection of dogs for total dog newbies like us also led to us favouring one organisation over another. And if that organisation had 100% medium and large breeds that are not HDB-approved, that is just the luck of the draw for us.

Of course, we could have persisted in waiting or continued with ASD or other organisations. But here is a perfectly good dog awaiting to be adopted, behaves even better than that beagle that always barks at us from the 6th floor balcony or the dachshund at the park that escaped from its owner to chase a cat. Why should we wait when we are all ready to get on with our lives.

Donna is by default an Ikea fan

By weliveinaflat

On March 15, 2013

In Shopping

Received a new Ikea publication today in the mail called “live“. If I sew, I would so make a kitty like in the picture below for Donna. :P

Source: Ikea

But alas, the only sewing I do is patching up the holes Donna opened in her Comfort Cab bear and her Sakae sushi frog. Yes, corporations. That’s hopefully where all the corporate premiums will end up, torn and tattered by a happy dog. Muahahahahaha! Please continue to put them in goody bags. :P

But back to Ikea. I do like their toys. Donna’s preloved pink Ikea hippo (pictured below) has pretty durable stitching that withstood her tugging and is safe for babies with no parts that our silly dog could potentially swallow or choke on. Mr P’s colleague’s chihuahua plays only with Ikea toys. That chihuahua, I heard, turns its nose up on Daiso toys. My, my. Our Donna will run after her Daiso rope-toy any day.

But no other company has more impact on Donna than Ikea. Observe.

“Go to your bed Donna, go to your bed”

“Am I going to get a treat for going to my bed?”

“This is taking so long I am getting sleepy… zZzZzZzZz…”

Besides her toys in the $1.80 Ikea bin, we haven’t really gotten much new things for her. After the forbidden sofa, she prefers my old single quilt for her bed, but that is really hard to maintain the way this dog sheds!! That is, until we found an awesome solution, stuff it into the 65×65 Akerkulla cushion cover. And its such a pretty and contemporary design too compared to the other more expensive 65×65 cushions!

Donna has a second cushion bed stuffed with our existing Ikea 65×65 pillow, but this is puffier than the quilt and she seems less comfortable on it, spends less time there.

Eventually when I am gainfully employed, we will get her a nice big bed that she can spread out on comfortably.

So many dog breeds, so many sad stories

By weliveinaflat

On March 14, 2013

In Dog & You

When we were contemplating dog ownership, I did some research on the Internet and learnt new terms such as “puppy mill”, “backyard breeders”, “animal rescue” etc, which eventually set us on the route of dog adoption, rather than buying a puppy of a known breed from a pet shop.

One of the dogs on the Internet which made a lasting impression on me was Rosie. When I showed Mr P Rosie’s picture, he wasn’t sure what it was I was showing him.

Rosie is a poor little chihuahua born from a backyard breeder with severe congenital deformities of the face, jaw, spine and legs. Despite her deformities, she managed to survive by crawling across urine soaked floors of the backyard breeder’s home through years of feces to eat what bits of food the other dogs being hoarded left behind. More about Rosie’s story here.

Rosie’s story is a very visual reminder why not to buy from any ol’ breeder but to ask questions, do our research and make sure we do buy a dog from a reputable breeder.

But reputable is not enough.

Originally broadcasted in 2008, the video below – Pedigree Dogs Exposed – dug into how breeding practices of some reputable breeders in the UK is destroying pedigree dog breeds through inbreeding and of dogs not scanned for pre-existing conditions. The investigative documentary focused particularly on winning showdogs, their health and their detrimental impact on the breed’s health when used as studs to breed puppies close to the breed standard in form. You may not want to watch this, if you cannot stomach images of dogs in pain or discomfort.

Pedigree Dogs Exposed – Three Years On
– Part 1, Part 2a, Part 2b, unable to locate part3 but you can read the summary of the remaining content on wikipedia

So yes, reputable is not enough. If we were seeking a pure bred dog, we should love your future pet and protect its health right now by making the effort to identify a socially responsible breeder that makes good health and diversity a criteria in his operations.

In the end, we decided that rather than buy, we should adopt. We know our limitations and were not looking to be all good Samaritan and adopt the first troubled shelter pup with all sorts of health conditions. But one more shelter dog adopted I guess would open up one more space for another rescue in the shelter, as long as there was an adoptable dog that fitted our criteria, there’s no reason to buy one. I’d rather save up that money to spend on better food and other stuff like heartworm preventatives and medical care for my adopted dog, especially if we had ended up adopting a breed that can be expected to have congenital conditions as it age.

Other references
– Are we breeding our dogs to extinction
– It’s not all lost with bad breeding

Uncle Gardener

By weliveinaflat

On March 13, 2013

In Dog & You

At some point in my short dog-walking life I have learn that some dogs pay no heed when Donna and I walked pass them. But sometimes, the dog reacts quite vocally. We had something like a German Shepard bark at us before. We met two small chihuahuas, one was curious but the other one in the owner’s arm started to cry like we are murdering it. It’s not about the size of the dog, not really. The biggest dog we ever walked past on the same park path looked more interested than aggressive, and Donna was certainly even more interested as well the way she was staring and tugging.

But nowadays more often than not, we just continue walking past the other dogs, whether they yelp at us or no. One reason being Donna’s mild kennel cough symptoms, which we wouldn’t want to expose other dogs to. The other being, I would prefer Donna to stay focused on the walk rather than get accustomed to stopping to check out every friendly or fierce dog on the way. It had never occurred to me to do it but when I read on this blog (which I have taken to stalking, omg~) that if there was already a dog on the sidewalk, they would cross the road to other side, I thought that’s probably a good thing to follow when necessary. (They are prolific posters so I can’t find the exact blog post :P).

We live in a flat situated in one of four apartment blocks that are connected on the second floor by a common carpark rooftop garden. Donna and I have been taking our short 10min walks here. We don’t see other dogs every time we are here, but when we do, it was always a toy or a small dog because these are HDB-approved. This morning there was a small brown dog with his owner. We saw them across the children’s playground in the middle of the garden so we stopped to see which side they would take. They went left, so we went right and arc-ed around the playground in the middle. The nice man gave us a smile and neither of us made to interact more than that or for our dogs to meet.

The garden is a pleasant place, especially when it is not dirtied by random late night parties where people leave trash all over and if you choose to ignore the small yellow puddles of dog pee on the wall, by the drains, by the corners of the stone seats. I really hate that so I always make Donna pee on the grass only. Although sometimes Donna will get overwhelmed by the other dogs’ scent and pee on the pavement quickly before I can stop her. And when I do catch her, she is already in mid-pee and I’ll overreact and immediately pull her towards the grass. So yes, it would look like a mad woman hauling a dog with pee drops flying in an arc as they flee towards the grass! I am so sorry fellow residents for the pee spray :( I always feel sorry afterwards for Donna’s poor neck too. Nowadays, once she starts to fixate on sniffing the concrete, I just make her sit. Though Mr P prefers to be mobile so he would shift her collar up her neck and shorten the leash so that Donna had no choice but to walk with her head up in the air rather than with her nose vacuuming the ground. So with time and between us, maybe we will slowly have a dog that as a way of life pee and poop only on the grass and can sit for a time with patience regardless of the distractions all around.

We had just walked past the playground when Donna’s nose started hoovering the pavement again, so I made her sit. I looked up to find an old gardener further up the path looking at us.

“That’s a mongrel,” he remarked. Yes, I agreed.

“She is local? A Singapore dog?”

“Yes” Online, people have called dogs like Donna the Singapore Special.

In the world of casual acquaintanceship, you can always strike up a conversation with some random stranger without ever knowing their names. You may even know their dogs’ names, but the humans, they rarely offer theirs and I never think to ask or identify myself.

That was how it was with this man, whom we shall henceforth call Uncle Gardener. It is common to see Indian workers clearing weeds, trash and basically doing all those cleaning and maintenance duties that our town councils have employed them for. Uncle Gardener is a true blue Singaporean, who tells me how he used to have a dog like Donna with sibuk or four eyes (if you count the distinctive tan spots above her eyes as eyes!). But his was a local short legged dog and smaller than Donna. They used to have so many dogs in the kampong (traditional village), called Johnny, Bobby, etc.

“Wait a minute, why do these dogs have English names?” I asked, “Didn’t they have names like Ah-Fu (Good Fortune) or Ah-Wang (Prosperity).”

Oh yes, he replied, Ah Fu, Ah Wang, Ah Or (Black), Or-Or (Black-Black).

I kept making Donna sit every time she stands up.

“What is her name?”

“Donna”

“Oh, Donna,” he proceeds to call her, “Donna, Donna, Johnny, Donny, Ah Or…”

Donna looks everywhere, distracted.

Uncle Gardener starts to tell me about the community cats that go to him to be fed in the morning. He thought they must have been abandoned, they were all neutered. He fed him with kibble, $8 a bag. No fish, he says, it’s too dirty if they leave the fish half eaten. They finish up all the dry kibble when they are hungry.

I remarked that Donna is a picky eater and wouldn’t eat kibble by itself.

In those days in the kampong, we don’t feed them in the morning or afternoon, Uncle Gardener said. We only feed them at night. They are hungry by then, they eat anything. All the day’s leftover food is slopped into a pail and all the dogs and cats go at it.

“What? Wouldn’t the dogs and cats fight if they have to all eat from the same pail?” I asked.

No, the dogs give way to the cats, said Uncle Gardener. At night the cats crawl into the dogs and snuggle against them to go to sleep. The dogs give way, raise their legs, adjust their bodies and sometimes they end up rolled over by the cat!

I was tickled and wondered how Donna would react if we got a cat.

“I used to have a dog just like her,” Uncle Gardener repeated, “but then the government relocated us to live in the flat. And I was told that it is illegal to take my dog with me. I had to leave it in the kampong and they rounded all the dogs up and took them away. I never saw it again.”

I felt bad for Uncle Gardener and didn’t know what to say.

She is a good dog, he said. These mongrels learn very fast and they are very obedient. Can you shake hand?

I walked Donna over and got her to offer him her paw to shake.

“She don’t know ‘shake hand’? ‘Paw’, what language is that?” he asked.

I explained that Donna was taught at the shelter to respond to ‘paw’. It means her foot.

“Oh, paw, paw…”

After sitting for so long Donna was restive so we said goodbye.

“She is a good dog, not like our neighbour’s dogs, always fighting and noisy.”

And so we part ways, but maybe we will meet again downstairs at the garden. Or maybe, we will make other casual acquaintances with their own story to tell.