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    Button: The Hokkien Therapy Dog
    Button: The Hokkien Therapy Dog
    Button: The Hokkien Therapy Dog
    Ebook126 pages1 hour

    Button: The Hokkien Therapy Dog

    By Fiona Foo

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    About this ebook

    Hokkien Button is no ordinary dog. She was trained as a therapy pet who understands Hokkien, winning the hearts of many. When Fiona first meets Button, something clicks. Here is a loveable dog who is being mistreated and unloved. So Fiona decides to steal her, and they soon transform each other's lives. In fact, Fiona used to have a terrible fear of dogs—so how does she become the founder of Hope Dog Rescue, saving strays and finding them forever homes? For her part, Button learns affection and a calm confidence. She begins to understand Hokkien and is trained to become a therapy pet, visiting Hokkien hospice patients and bringing joy to many. Though Button is no longer with us, this is her inspiring story.
     

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherEpigram Books
    Release dateMar 25, 2021
    ISBN9789814845939
    Button: The Hokkien Therapy Dog

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      Book preview

      Button - Fiona Foo

      CHAPTER 1

      LOST AND FOUND

      One afternoon in 2016, I was at home with my main man—a black-and-silver miniature schnauzer named Popsicle—when I received a string of WhatsApp messages.

      We found a Schnauzer

      AVA and SPCA have no records

      Not another one, I thought, sighing inwardly.

      Went back to where she was found and asked around.

      Nothing

      Walked dog, she doesn’t know how to go home

      No Lost & Found posters up

      Can you take over?

      Here we go again. It sounded like a case of an overconfident owner who had let her dog off the leash but the dog couldn’t find its way back to her. Or it could be another case of pet abandonment.

      For the zillionth time, I wondered why people could not be more responsible with their pets so that animal welfare groups would not have to make such unnecessary rescues and could instead focus on helping the really dire and genuine cases.

      I then heard the whole story about the schnauzer. My neighbour, Kevin, had gone to a childcare centre to pick up his daughter when he saw a miniature schnauzer wandering nearby. He lived in the block opposite mine in Bishan and I’d spoken to his wife, Ashley, on a few occasions because she had two miniature schnauzers of her own (seemed we were destined to bond over schnauzers). The dog that Kevin saw had on a tattered red collar; she was sniffing the grass and seemed to be scavenging for food. Kevin looked around for the owner but did not see one, so he decided to bring her home first.

      After he dropped his daughter off at home, Kevin took the dog out on a leash and went back to the same location in the hopes of bumping into someone looking for her. They walked around for hours but the dog did not seem to recognise her way home. Neither was there anyone searching for her. Over the next three days, Kevin put up Lost Dog posters in the vicinity and continued to bring her back to the same area, hoping to bump into the owner, but, alas, to no avail.

      During those days when Kevin and Ashley had her, they noticed that the dog was peeing blood and they very kindly took her to the vet. The vet diagnosed the problem as a urinary tract infection and gave her a course of antibiotics.

      After three days, Kevin and his family decided they couldn’t keep the dog as they had two already, so they sought to hand the scruffy dog over to Hope Dog Rescue, an animal welfare group I started in 2011. That’s when I received the flurry of messages. Ashley was the one who had texted me and asked if I could take over.

      But of course; all we do is sit around and wait for scruffy dogs to rescue.

      button

      We had arranged to meet at my void deck, and I had not been waiting long when I saw Kevin approaching with his young daughter and a dirty-looking grey schnauzer. From a distance, I could see that her fur was long and tangled and she seemed to be quite old. As they came closer, the neglect became more apparent. Her fur was rough and unkempt, and she probably had not been groomed for a while. Her nails were long, dirty and unclipped, her gait was unsteady, as if she was not used to walking, and she had poor motor coordination.

      I glanced at her. She had a blank expression in her eyes—eyes that had given up on life—but I sensed there was a part of her that was still hanging on, hoping for a second shot at happiness. Feeling sorry for the poor little mutt, I bent forward to pat her and caught a whiff of the musky doggy scent. Kevin handed the leash to me. She quietly followed alongside as if she knew that she was meant to be mine.

      When she got back to my place, instead of sniffing the new environment curiously, as most dogs would, she wandered around looking like a forsaken ragamuffin. She spent the rest of the afternoon humping my male dog, Popsicle, who was more than fifteen years old then. She did that until Popsicle got tired of trying to escape her clutches and I had to separate them. Then it dawned on me that perhaps she had been a breeding dog belonging to a home breeder and that humping was the only thing she knew. She might have been discarded after she had been used. I checked her belly and true enough, her tits were dangling, as if she had had quite a number of litters. I then checked her teeth to get a better gauge of how old she was, but her teeth were so rotten and foul smelling, there was no way to use them as a guide.

      I fed her some boiled chicken that was left over from my dogs’ lunch and she wolfed everything down quickly. It seemed as if she had not had a decent meal in a long time. She did not want to drink water all day, although I tried to place the water bowl near her mouth a few times. After checking the back of her neck and noticing she was dehydrated, I fed her water with a syringe.

      Many thoughts ran through my mind. What was I going to do with this dog? Foster her? Would I be able to find a foster home on such short notice? Adopt her if no one claimed her? My other schnauzer, Snapple, had passed away slightly more than a year ago, and I had not thought of adopting another yet as I had Popsicle, who was pretty old. Caring for a senior dog is a whole different ball game; they have many needs to be catered to. They have difficulty doing simple things that we take for granted, such as standing up on their own after lying down and peeing in the right places (thus requiring more cleaning). Older dogs usually develop canine cognitive dysfunction (generally known as canine dementia), poor vision, aches and pains from arthritis—and that meant more vet visits and bills, etc.

      I already had my hands full with one little old dog and I was also fostering Harper, a special needs dog who was paralysed in the lower half of her body and incontinent. I lived with my eighty-three-year-old mother, but she could only help with her eye power, keeping watch at times when I could not be at two places at once. At her age, I could not expect her to help physically. My mother helped out in her own way, like calling me frantically when I was out and yelling into the phone, Hurry! COME BACK NOW! Harper pooed and it leaked out from her diaper! Come back before she crawls all over the place and leaves poo marks everywhere! That sentence was enough to send chills down my spine!

      Back then I was working as a private hire driver so my hours were flexible, but as an only child, with one senior human, one senior dog and one special needs dog, would I be biting off more than I could chew?

      There were days when I felt under the weather or had back pain, and had trouble lifting all seventeen kilogrammes of Harper. Those were the days when I felt I needed to practise greater self-control and not adopt any more dogs.

      I have been rescuing dogs for the past decade and have always had a soft spot for old female dogs and special needs dogs. My reason? I feel sorry for the female dogs who are constantly being forced to mate and have to go through the pain of giving birth almost on a regular basis. How sad and horrible, not to mention damaging to their souls and degrading to their self-worth.

      I live in a small HDB flat and if I took in another dog, would there be enough space if I temporarily needed to foster rescues? What if neighbours complained? So many what-ifs. Was it worth the hassle to take her in?

      I told myself not to jump the gun and don’t think so much. Perhaps her owner might make an appearance the next day.

      The next day came and Kevin informed me that a man who identified himself as her owner had called to claim the little scruffy dog, but he had no proof of ownership. He did not know her microchip number or have her licence from the Agri-Food and Veterinary Authority (AVA). All he had was a blurred photo of a schnauzer that did not really resemble her.

      Kevin requested that I bring

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